1132nd RO Water Purification Plant opened at Mahinda MV, Kauduluwewa

• Sponsored By M/S Perera and Sons (P&S) Company and Built By Sri Lanka Navy
  
  
• By: Admiral Ravindra C Wijegunaratne

Iwas invited to declare open the 1132nd RO plant built by the Navy with money provided by M/S Per­era and Sons, Sri Lanka’s iconic, cen­tury­old bakery and food ser­vice chain, estab­lished in 1902, known for wide­spread out­lets (235) in Sri Lanka. This com­pany, estab­lished in 1902 by Phil­an­throp­ist K A Charles Per­era well known for their efforts to help the needy and humble people. Help­ing people access clean and safe drink­ing water is a project this esteemed Com­pany inves­ted in recently.

The Chronic Kid­ney Dis­ease (CKD) star­ted spread­ing like “wild­fire” mainly in North Cent­ral, North West­ern and East­ern provinces. The med­ical experts found major reason for CKD is drink­ing and cook­ing con­tam­in­ated water. The map below shows how the CKD spreads in Sri Lanka.

In 2015, when I was Com­mander of the Navy, with our Research and Devel­op­ment Unit of SLN led by excel­lent Mar­ine Engin­eer- who with his expert­ise and innov­at­ive skills brought LTTE Sea Tigers Wing to their knees ( fam­ous remote con­trolled explos­ive-laden Arrow boats to fight LTTE SEA TIGER SUCIDE BOATS men­ace was his innov­a­tion!) , then Cap­tain MCP Dis­sanayake (2015), came up with a bril­liant idea of man­u­fac­tur­ing low- cost Reverse Osmosis Water Puri­fic­a­tion Plants. SLN Research and devel­op­ment team man­u­fac­tured these plants at a cost of one-tenth of an impor­ted plant.

The Navy estab­lished the first such plant at Kadawath- Ram­bawa in Madawachchiya Divi­sional Sec­ret­ariat area, where the CKD patients were highest. The plant was opened on 9th Decem­ber 2015, on the 65th Anniversary of SLN.

It was an extremely proud achieve­ment by SLN. First, the plants were sponsored by officers and sail­ors of the Sri Lanka Navy, from a Social Respons­ib­il­ity Fund estab­lished where each officer and sailor con­trib­uted Rs 30/- from their pay every month will­ingly. This money Rs 30/- X 50,000 Naval per­son­nel gave us money suf­fi­cient to build one plant every month.

Observing great work done by SLN, then Pres­id­ent Maith­ri­p­ala Siris­ena estab­lished a Pres­id­en­tial Task Force on erad­ic­at­ing CKD, and fund­ing was no issue for SLN. We developed a fact­ory line at our R and D unit at Wel­is­ara, and we estab­lished RO plants in double- quick time. Vari­ous com­pan­ies/organ­isa­tions and indi­vidu­als also fun­ded the project. Project con­tin­ued for the last ten years under six Navy Com­mand­ers after me, namely Admiral Travis Sin­niah, Admiral Sirimevan Ranas­inghe, Admiral Piyal De Silva, Admiral Nish­antha Ulu­ge­tenna, Admiral Priy­antha Per­era and the present Navy Com­mander, Vice Admiral Kan­chana Ban­a­goda. Today, a stag­ger­ing 1131 plants are estab­lished and the latest one at Kaudu­luwewa Mahinda MV plant was the 1132nd. Each plant cap­able of pro­du­cing up to ten thou­sand litres of clean drink­ing water (the quant­ity of bottled water you drink) each day! That means stag­ger­ing 11.32 mil­lion litres of clean drink­ing water to the pub­lic every day!