Construction and Engineering Services Minister Rajitha Senaratne who delivered the keynote speech at Annual Sessions of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects in Colombo has touched upon the importance of exploitation of natural resources prudently. He has pointed out that the world has witnessed an accelerated depletion of natural resources due to man-made and natural disasters, the Construction and Engineering Services Ministry said.

Minister Senaratne addressing the gathering said that earthquakes, floods, typhoons, landslides, melting of glaciers and forest fires had become common disasters and the Rio Earth Summit in 1993 was an eye opener. Since then nations had been paying more attention to industrial pollution caused by toxic effluents discharged by industrial complexes and factories, emission of CO2 leading to global warming, vehicle emission leading to health hazard and depletion of forest cover leading to global scarcity of water resources.

He pointed out that the governments of the world had laid a special emphasis on sustainable development. The time had come for policy-makers and professionals such as architects to join hands to ensure that economic goals could be achieved for people without the unwarranted exploitation of the irreplaceable natural resources and polluting the environment of the planet.

Minister Senaratne said that having realized the importance of the Construction Industry, President Mahinda Rajapaksa entrusted me the responsibility to operate the Construction Ministry. National Advisory Council was created by the cabinet approval and formulation of an Act to develop the Construction Industry was a long-felt necessity. With the inputs of the National Advisory Council, the Ministry managed to iron-out differences and was able to make the provisions in the Act acceptable to all stakeholders. This draft Act had received the cabinet approval and legal draftman and would be presented to parliament.

He added that vital issues pertaining to the Construction Industry, Minister Senaratne said that non-payment for professional services, ensuring that designs undertaken by qualified persons and avoiding delays in obtaining necessary statutory approvals to commence construction work would be adequately addressed with the passage of this new Act. A provision of the new Act would also provide "Doing more with less" by encouraging architects and designers to promote energy-efficient and environmental-friendly buildings where national excellence awards for such designs would be presented annually.