Dr Roshanie Dissanayake appointed Secretary to the Science and Technology Ministry

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has appointed Dr Roshanie Dissanayake as Secretary to the Ministry of Science and Technology, Hiru News reported, citing the President’s Media Division.

The letter of appointment was handed over on Friday morning at the Presidential Secretariat by Dr Nandika Sanath Kumanayake, Secretary to the President.

Dr Dissanayake previously served as an Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Public Administration, Provincial Councils and Local Government.

Context

The appointment lands as the ministry carries several active files. Sri Lanka is host to the BIMSTEC Technology Transfer Facility, whose establishment in Colombo was reported this week, and the ministry’s institutes — among them the Sri Lanka Standards Institution and the Industrial Technology Institute — have been running consumer-goods quality inspections through the year.

Update: the government confirms the appointment, and the spelling

The government’s news service has since filed on the appointment, confirming the account and settling a detail this article had left open.

The spelling is Roshanie. news.lk and the Daily Mirror both render the name Roshanie; Hiru News, on which this article originally relied, wrote “Roshani”. The government’s own service and the Daily Mirror agree, and that spelling should be treated as correct.

news.lk also sharpens her previous posting: she served as Additional Secretary (Sri Lanka Administrative Service — Special Grade) at the Ministry of Public Administration, Provincial Councils and Local Government. It confirms that the letter of appointment was handed over by Secretary to the President Dr Nandika Sanath Kumanayake at the Presidential Secretariat on the morning of 11 September.

Not reported

None of the three accounts says who held the post previously or why it fell vacant, gives Dr Dissanayake’s academic background, or states the effective date of the appointment. None indicates whether it forms part of a wider round of secretary-level changes.

Ada Derana was unreachable behind a CloudFront block.