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Making a makeshift ambulance of one car, on the advice of a doctor among them, they are able to bring their critically-injured friend to a private hospital in Colombo, where she undergoes major spinal surgery and “thankfully” recovers fully.
That was the day Minister of Economic Reforms and Public Distribution Dr. Harsha de Silva, who was then in the opposition, made a promise to himself. If he held office, he would develop a pre-hospital care ambulance service, a dire public need.
Dr. de Silva did come into office and was in the right place at the right time when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came a-visiting to Sri Lanka in March 2015.
“The Foreign Office in India was keen to do a development project for Sri Lanka as a gesture of goodwill, linked to Mr. Modi’s visit and had a list of about 20-30. I was working in our PM’s office and told Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe that I had a different idea to which he told me I could go ahead if I could convince Mr. Modi,” he says.
Meeting Mr. Modi in the lobby of Parliament, to his suggestion, Mr. Modi had replied: “Young man, of course, let’s do it.”
Smiling that he is not a young man, Dr. de Silva says that he had done his background work and knew that Mr. Modi had supported the ‘108 ambulance service’ in Gujarat when he was Chief Minister there.
Mr. Modi suggested that he start small with a grant of $7.5 million, working in tandem with India’s GVK EMRI.
Dr. de Silva sought the support of tech-savvy Dumindra Ratnayake who is the ‘back office’ of this initiative, while he is the ‘front-office’.
The service started with 88 ambulances and as the one-year operation was drawing to a close, Dr. de Silva was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, meeting Mr. Modi twice in his new role. The ambulance service was flourishing and when he requested expansion, Mr. Modi had only one condition – “If the Government of Sri Lanka takes charge, I’ll help.”
Dr. de Silva with the support of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe was able to see it through, with India providing the balance ambulances to make it a total of 297 along with another grant of $15.2m.
Among those he lauds for making the service a reality are former Indian Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar and Indian High Commissioners to Sri Lanka Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha and Taranjit Singh Sandhu and in Sri Lanka Arjuna Obeysekera who was then in the Attorney General’s Department (with whom he sat and wrote from scratch the 1990 Suwa Seriya Act which no one opposed, be it government or opposition) and the service’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Srilal de Silva.
Pointing out that this is the second largest grant (first was the tsunami housing grant) given by India ever to Sri Lanka, he says that it was the best people-to-people gift.
“Experts, data-driven technocrats, run Suwa Seriya with no political interference. This is the best deliverable of the government, the best public service, run like a private enterprise with accountability and no allegations of corruption,” he says, sending out a message to the public.
“Call 1990 – we will save your life!”
