(UTV|COLOMBO) – Lanka Sathosa, the country’s largest state owned retail chain, has clinched committed support from the people of the United States thereby recording the institution’s first ever inward global assistance flow on Thursday (24).
“The Ministry of Industry and Commerce has been working with USAID since 2005 on various initiatives to enhance the Ministry’s mandate” said Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen on 24 May. Minister Bathiudeen was addressing the MoU signing event between Lanka Sathosa and YouLead, a US Agency for International Development (USAID) funded project, on 24 May in Colombo. YouLead, a US Agency for International Development (USAID) funded project, is designed to help ensure it achieves those ambitious targets.
Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen who attended the partnership signing welcomed the collaboration. “The Ministry of Industry and Commerce has been working with USAID since 2005 on various initiatives to enhance the Ministry’s mandate. We thank USAID and YouLead for their continued support Sri Lanka” said Minister Bathiudeen and added: ” We have launched many initiatives to develop Lanka Sathosa and make it competitive. We have seven categories of stores and this proposed expansion includes all of them. We need to train a lot of bright young people and give them long-term career options, particularly those in rural areas where Lanka Sathosa is expanding rapidly. Therefore, we welcome a compatible skills training project to enhance Lanka Sathosa staff.”
“We are embarking on a program to dramatically expand the number of stores across the country. This will require hiring and training more than 1,000 new employees,” said Dr. S.H.M. Faraaz, CEO of Lanka Sathosa. Major General (Rtd.) Piyal Abeysekera, Director of Human Resources and Administration added, “We are delighted that USAID, through the YouLead project, is helping us achieve our mutual objectives to create more and better career opportunities for Sri Lanka’s youth.”
The partnership focuses on training Master Trainers so that they will be able to train the newly hired employees and the existing staff of Lanka Sathosa. Additionally, a skill gap analysis will help evaluate the existing skills of the workforce through a training needs analysis which will inform the design of the overall training and allow it to be tailored specifically to the culture and employment needs of Lanka Sathosa.
YouLead is a four-year (2017-2021) project supporting youth employment, vocational skills development, and youth entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka. The project works closely with the Ministry of Skills Development and Vocational Training to improve vocational education and youth employability for the more than 20% of Sri Lanka’s young people who are unemployed. YouLead is also empowered to work closely with employers who can make a significant impact by employing large numbers of youth-particularly women and those from areas with high employment.
Lanka Sathosa, under the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, is the largest state owned retail shop network in the country and also functions as the price setter of many essential items in the domestic retail market-with its network spanning 400 outlets.
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