Senior Minister and Chairman of Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE), D. E. W. Gunasekera yesterday said that there was unprecedented corruption in the state sector and it had reached alarming proportions.
He alleged that there was high level corruption at the Inland Revenue Department and it was one of the three institutions which brought in revenue for state coffers, others being Customs and Excise. “Police cannot tackle corruption though they would nab those accepting bribes and therefore there have to be highly trained officers for the task. As a result of corruption the government revenue has dropped drastically by as much as 14% since 1978.”
He was addressing 50th Annual general Meeting of the Sri Lanka Audit Service Association in Colombo.
The COPE had already probed 188 public enterprises and inquiries into the remaining 44 would be completed before the year end, the Senior Minister said, noting that currently there were 13 million public employees. He said it was a burden on the public.
The lowest paid employee at the Central Bank earned as much as Rs. 50,000 but did not pay income tax and it was so with so many other state institutions where the employees earned very high salaries. Their institutions were paying their taxes illegally, the COPE Chairman said.
Minister Gunasekera said that the Auditor General Department had played vital role as a watchdog since the colonial times and it was the first government department to be established by the British after establishing their rule over the entire country. He said he had once worked at the Inland Revenue Department.
The Island