Lanka Sathosa breaks new ground by securing US assistance

YouLead Project Director Charles Conconi (second from left) and Lanka Sathosa CEO Dr. Mohamed Faraz (third from right) exchange the MoU documents in the presence of the Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen and USAID Economic Growth Office Acting Director Brian Wittnebel (far left), Additional Secretary of Ministry of Industry and Commerce Sheitha Senaratne (second from right) and Senior Advisor to Minister Bathiudeen Himali Jinadasa are also present

• Records first international assistance in its history
• Bathiudeen thanks USAID and YouLead
• Support wave to initially focus on Sathosa HR upgrade

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 24 May.

“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 Thursday, addressing the MoU signing event between Lanka Sathosa and YouLead in Colombo.

YouLead, a US Agency for International Development (USAID) funded project, is designed to help ensure it achieves those ambitious targets. 

Bathiudeen welcomed the collaboration, stating: “We thank USAID and YouLead for their continued support Sri Lanka. 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 Lanka Sathosa CEO Dr. S.H.M. Faraaz. 

Director of Human Resources and Administration Major General (Rtd.) Piyal Abeysekera 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.