Professor H.M.J.C. Pitawala has been appointed the new Vice-Chancellor of Uva Wellassa University by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
The letter of appointment was presented to Professor Pitawala by Secretary to the President Dr. Nandika Sanath Kumanayake on Thursday afternoon, Hiru News reported, citing the Presidential Media Division. The appointment takes effect on 2 November.
Professor Pitawala was serving as a professor in the Faculty of Applied Sciences at Uva Wellassa University before the appointment — an internal promotion rather than an appointment from outside the institution.
Uva Wellassa University, based on Passara Road in Badulla, is the state university serving the Uva Province.
An appointment made as the sector stops work
The appointment lands in the middle of an escalating dispute across the state university system. The Federation of University Teachers’ Associations is striking for a day on Friday 30 October over a shortage of academic staff and resources and excessive workloads — the third stoppage or protest of the academic year, after action in September and a warning on 10 October that the federation would intensify trade union action.
FUTA has said letters to the President and the Deputy Minister of Finance seeking talks on university funding and infrastructure went unanswered. Neither the appointment filing nor the strike reporting connects the two, and no link should be inferred; they are recorded here because the incoming Vice-Chancellor takes office four days after a nationwide stoppage by the academics he will lead.
A single-source report
No other verified newsroom’s filing on this appointment could be dated and cited. Ada Derana carried the story at news ID 250797, but its site has returned a CloudFront block for roughly seven weeks, so no publication date could be extracted and it is not cited here. Searches of the Daily Mirror breaking-news listing, news.lk and the Presidential Secretariat’s news index returned nothing on the appointment.
Hiru’s photograph of the event — not reproduced here, as it carries the outlet’s watermark — shows the appointment letter being handed over in a wood-panelled office beside the national flag, consistent with the account of a handover by the Secretary to the President.
Not reported
The filing does not name the outgoing Vice-Chancellor, say whether the post was vacant or when the predecessor’s term ended, or give the length of Professor Pitawala’s term. It does not give his academic discipline or prior administrative roles, and it does not report any statement from Professor Pitawala, the University Grants Commission or the Ministry of Education.