Subject: Whatever happened to (my) three million dollars?

I am 86 years of age today, and thought of something which I have been always curious about and which I believe may interest your readers and the general public.

- BY VERA GAMINI SAMARASINGHE

Vera Swami (centre)

I therefore thought I should write about this incident which happened some years ago and turned to your esteemed Sunday paper for publication.I am not going into details of dates etc as I do not want to spend a lot of the short time I have to live in delving into my files, but would rather prefer to relate it as a short story which may interest your readers even more.

In 1987, after doing much research into the water flows of the upper reaches of the Belihuloya with regard to its energy potential as a hydroelectric power plant, I was awarded a Rolex Award by the Rolex watch company of Geneva, Switzerland for my painstaking work. The then President Mr .J.R.Jayewardene called me to his office and congratulated me for my work as it would have increased the hydropower potential of Sri Lanka by 7%!

During this meeting I asked the President whether we could do this as a private sector project as the CEB was not keen to do anything somebody else had discovered. However, the end result of this meeting was the establishment of a committee to ponder on the involvement of the private sector in power generation, which became the start of a change in policy of the GOSL in allowing the private sector to own power plants.