NPP Perth - WA

West Australians welcome new Hon Consul of Srilanka
Eng. Chirantha Weerawardena
BSc Eng, MSc (Mineral Economics), FAusIMM CP, MIMMM CEng, FIEAust CPEng EngExec NER, APEC Eng, IntPE(Aus)
Eng. Chirantha Weerawardena is a Chartered Professional Engineer accredited by three professional engineering institutions in Australia & UK and a Fellow of both Engineers Australia and Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. He graduated from University of Moratuwa in 1992 and subsequently obtained three post graduate qualifications including MSc (Mineral Economics) at Curtin University. Chirantha worked 10 years in Sri Lanka before migrating to Australia in 2002. He has got 33 years of experience in mine planning, operations and management.
After holding senior mine planning and mine operations positions in very large open pit mines in Western Australia, Chirantha is currently working as Director and Managing Consultant of his own boutique mining engineering and mine management consultancy serving a number of major international mining companies.
He has experience in directly managing up to A$450M annual operation budgets with up to 500 people. Chirantha has also managed multi-disciplinary technical services departments of very large open pit mining operations up to A$1B annual budgets
He is currently leading and participating in scoping, feasibility, project evaluation and development of several large-scale mining projects as well as carrying out due diligence on acquisition targets. Chirantha’s extensive mineral industry experience covers a number of commodities including Graphite, Rock Aggregates, Tantalum, Tin, Lithium and Iron Ore.
His interest also extends to mineral policy, investment and regulatory aspects. He is passionate about reforming Sri Lankan mining regulatory regime to attract foreign direct investment.
In addition to his professional work, he is actively involved in supporting engineering professionals of Sri Lankan origin in WA through The Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka -WA Chapter and WA Sri Lankan Mining Engineers Group. Chirantha and his wife Deepika operate a Free computer training centre. built by themselves for the benefit of children of their village and surrounding area. He also has a proud history of working for free education rights and was subjected to suppression of then anti-democratic SL government
Chirantha’s intention is to use Honorary Consul role for supporting Sri Lanka economic development as per the vision of current Sri Lankan government by building relationships with WA government and industry in addition to meeting consular needs of Sri Lankan community.