The Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) has rapped Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) for taking overdrafts from banks at high interest rates in spite of having cash, fixed deposits and Treasury Bills.
Addressing Secretaries to ministries in Parliament last week, COPE Chairman Senior Minister Dew Gunasekera highlighted the irregularities in the now bankrupt institution to emphasize the urgent need to restore financial integrity in the public sector.
The minister questioned the then SLC interim administration’s action in the run-up to Cricket World Cup. Former National Cricket captain Kumar Sangakkara caused a political furor last year when he publicly accused SL administration of waste, corruption and irregularities.
The minister alleged that Secretaries who functioned as the Chief Accounting Officers to respective ministries had pathetically failed to perform their duties.
The General Secretary of the Communist Party demanded that Secretaries to ministries should take responsibility for all transactions, while directing them to call for police assistance to inquire into dirty transactions. Gunasekera said that the majority of Secretaries had failed to follow specific instructions, thereby causing debilitating losses to national economy.
Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga, Senior Minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama (on behalf of the Public Accounts Committee), Treasury Chief Dr. P. B. Jayasundera and Auditor General, too, addressed the gathering.
Minister Gunasekera said that those responsible for the pathetic situation in the public sector should be glad that the print media hadn’t bothered to report each dirty transaction exposed by the AG and COPE.
Sources told The Island that there hadn’t been any previous meeting similar to the three-hour confab jointly chaired by Messrs Gunasekera and Amunugama.
The secretaries had been told to seek the intervention of COPE if the police, the Criminal Investigation Department and the Bribery Commission weren’t responsive to their complaints, sources said. Asked whether the COPE was reluctant to take up the issue with ministries plagued by corruption, sources said that the watchdog committee would shortly seek President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s approval to call a meeting with ministers to discuss deteriorating financial discipline in the public sector.
The Island: