CAA enrolls person already employed elsewhere…

Feb 15, 2017

For the first time, 26 officers recruited to the Civil Aviation Authority are being given training at Mattala at a wasteful expenditure of nearly six million. Its course director is the safety manager of Fly Southern airline (letter attached). Fly Southern has only recently been approved by the CAA to operate internal flights.

Traditionally, a safety manager is a fulltime occupation as the safety of aircraft is of utmost importance. However, violating all regulations, the CAA director general has enrolled Fly Southern’s safety manager Duncan Jayawardena and given him a one year contract with a monthly salary of Rs. 120,000 (letter attached).

Three days a week, Jayawardena holds training sessions at Mattala and does his safety manager job only two days a week. He is misleading state officials while endangering Samith Abeygunawardena’s Fly Southern airline. CAA employees wonder as to whether Jayawardena has invisible powers to do two jobs at the same time. They accuse their DG of committing an abuse of state money through his bosom friend. It was Jayawardena who had got the flight dispatcher license for the DG, who draws a monthly allowance of Rs. 300,000 for that, when he was at Air Lanka in 1989. The DG has received the license without undergoing the course, but as one given him in recognition of his service as an official of the then Aviation Department who had supervised the course. In return, the nearly 70 year old Jayawardena has now received a job at the CAA.

It is clear that the DG has enrolled a person already employed elsewhere to the CAA to fulfill his personal objectives, while at the same time endangering the country’s civil aviation sector as well as airplane and passenger safety. CAA employees urge the transport and civil aviation ministry secretary to take proper action against their DG immediately for this serious wrongdoing.