My Trip to Batticaloa

This assignment required me to travel to Batticaloa which is in the eastern coast of Sri Lanka. The drive to Batticaloa is long (About 320 KM) but the killer is that it takes nearly 8 hours to get there. I left at 6.15 AM from Colombo and arrived at 2.15 PM in Batticaloa; stopping only for Breakfast and a cup of tea.

The assignment was 10 day evaluation of the management capacity of an organization who was delivering services to the people of the eastern province. The unique aspect of this assignment was that the client wanted to evaluate very specific aspects of its organization management structure, financial management, HR management, monitoring and communication systems. Therefore I had to customize the tools we used to a very high degree to ensure that the tools we used were compatible with the specific need. It also meant that this level of customization was a green field (Not done before so don’t know the pitfalls) this was further complicated by the fact that the execution of the assignment had to have a tri-linguistic person to facilitate the field work as well as translate at the synthesis workshop.

The assignment went in a smooth manner and it was well received by the employees of the organization. Generally management capacity evaluations can get tricky as some managers take it as a personal weakness and get very defensive.

I was surprised at the weather in Batticaloa and the amount of water on the ground. The roads that went through the lagoon were nearly inundated. Some of the shorter routs to Batticaloa were flooded so I had to travel via Polonnaruwa. In terms of the post war development in the east; I must say that all the reports regarding infrastructure development are correct and perhaps under reported. Road, bridge and utility projects are still going on and the whole of the eastern province looks like one giant construction site.

The fishing industry is booming in Batticaloa and the seafood prices are less than half of what it is in Colombo. So the team had seafood at every opportunity. The tourism industry has a demand but the number of rooms available seemed to be inadequate for the demand. There is a dire need for quality hotel rooms in Batticaloa. The availability of jobs would be the main social issue in the coming months as the construction industry starts to finish the construction projects.

I have to travel to Wadduwa (from Batticaloa) to attend the 6^th South Asian Regional Workshop on Resource Mobilization which starts today; so will be on the road for the rest of the day.