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Business

Biz briefs
Sampath, Seylan open for "Ganudenu"
All branches of Sampath Bank and Seylan Bank will open for the traditional Avurudhu Ganudenu between 9 am and 12 noon today, the banks said in separate statements.

At the Sampath Bank branches, customers making a savings deposit of Rs. 5,000 would be entitled to a free umbrella.

Seylan Bank said it was commemorating the New Year with a host of events while customers involved in "ganudenu" transactions would be entitled to a gift worth Rs. 10 as a gesture of prosperity and friendship.

Express claim payment by ETF
The Employees' Trust Fund (ETF) said last week that it will, from May, launch an express claim payment service for the convenience of its members.
Under the new initiative by the new management of the ETF, members are assured that payment claims would be settled within two working days for a payment of Rs. 1,000.

"This is provided the employer of the respective applicant has made contributions regularly and relevant documents submitted by the employer and the ex-employee are in order," an ETF statement said.

ETF's Manager, Benefit Administration, Asoki Wickremasinghe said that from May 1 this express service would be available and a special counter would be opened at the ETF office for speedy processing of sub-applications.

Ceylinco adds 'gold' to township
Ceylinco Developers Ltd. (CDL) from April 1 has added yet another value added dimension to its Millennium City township. According to CDL's Assistant General Manager Marketing, Mevan Serasinghe, the 'Adding Gold to a Golden Opportunity' promotion entitles all those who reserve a house at Millennium City to a gift of a diamond studded gold coin which will be presented to them on making their reservation.

Serasinghe was quoted as saying in a CDL statement that the coins come in two sizes, the smaller coin valued at approximately Rs. 22,000 while the bigger coin is valued at around Rs. 30,000.

This self-contained luxurious township which has a wide range of recreational facilities including a club house, gymnasium, swimming pool, kiddies pool, tennis and basketball courts, landscaped park and kiddies play area, has sold over 875 houses to-date.

CEAT-Kelani signs agreement
CEAT-Kelani Associated Holdings has achieved a significant breakthrough in efforts to maintain industrial peace with trade unions of its two manufacturing arms, Associated CEAT (Pvt) Ltd and CEAT-Kelani International Tyres (Pvt) Ltd, entering into long-term agreements with the management.

The company said the two agreements would lay a foundation on which future growth plans could be built, CEAT-Kelani Associated Holdings Managing Director V. Sekhar said.

"With active technology support and assistance from CEAT India, the CEAT tyres in Sri Lanka have been re-designed for enhanced performance and coupled with an aggressive pricing strategy. CEAT-Kelani is now poised for excellent growth. These agreements will lend fresh impetus to plans for a greater level of production," Ahwin Padukone, General Manager, Sales and Marketing, said. Sekhar added: "I have to compliment the labour at both factories for rising up to the occasion at a time when the company needs to maximise its production to increase its supply to both the domestic and international markets which would ultimately contribute to nation building efforts. We thank the Commissioner General of Labour for catalysing an early settlement."

Associated CEAT was established in 1993 and is the only pneumatic tyre manufacturer in Sri Lanka to receive ISO 9002 accreditation. In January 1999, the company entered into a strategic partnership with Kelani Tyres.

SriLankan surges ahead in March
March 2002 has yielded an unprecedented seat factor for SriLankan Airlines, the highest ever on record.

"We are running full flights all around our route network and have achieved an 86.03 percent seat factor overall," says SriLankan's Head of Commercial, G.T. Jeyaseelan. "March falls within the busy period for air travel. Nevertheless, the seat factor we achieved has overshot the target by several percentage points."

"Since November we have also aggressively promoted Sri Lanka in our destinations overseas by undertaking tactical commercial promotions such as a 'buy one, get one free' package and complimentary stays in Sri Lanka for transit passengers. Apart from our regular holidays and stopovers programmes we also began marketing special interest tours to Sri Lanka," he said.

The highest seat factor achieved by the airline previously was 84.19 percent in August 1990 when SriLankan had a fleet comprising two Tristar L1011-500s, two Tristar L1011-100s and one Boeing 737.

Regional Kodak workshop
Sri Lanka was the venue for a regional workshop on service, support and quality monitoring for quality engineers that was conducted by Kodak recently.

"Kodak has clearly identified the need to constantly improve its service and support levels to the Kodak Express chain which is in effect its point of interaction with the customer," said Country Business Manager Kodak Sri Lanka, Graham Marshall.
The workshop was conducted by National Manager Quality and Training Kodak India, Rakesh Kocchar, while General Manager Service and Support Kodak South West Asia cluster, Mohammed Farooqui, also addressed the participants and visited the local clients. Farooqui said Kodak had already begun its drive in this direction by training engineers in key areas such as digital technology, quality monitoring of prints and the maintenance of analogue and digital minilabs, which were all key areas. Farooqui also said that customer interaction skills were of paramount importance and emphasis would be placed on this aspect when training service and support personnel.

Health and safety training
The Sri Lanka Standards Institution (SLSI) has organised a training programme on occupational health and safety (OH & S) management systems on April 30.
It is meant to help organisations develop an approach to management of occupational health and safety in such a way as to protect employees and others whose health and safety may be affected by the organisation's activities, the SLSI said in a statement.

The overall cost to employers of personal injury work accidents, work related ill-health and avoidable non-injury accidents in the United Kingdom is estimated to be around 5-10 percent of all UK companies' gross trading profits. The position in Sri Lanka would be no better, the SLSI said. The occupational health and safety management system enables an organisation to control its occupational health and safety risks and improve its performance.

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