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By Nuwan Senarathna
UNP Parliamentarian Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe on Thursday made two complaints to the Bribery Commission, calling on them to investigate the alleged loss of Rs. 28 billion from the Mahapola Scholarship Trust Fund (MSTF), and Rs. 500 million loss to the State from shifting to the school uniform voucher system.
Dr. Rajapakshe alleged that the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) was established on a property that belonged to the MSTF. According to him, SLIIT had devalued the payments that should have been made to MSTF,and the SLIIT Board of Directors had engaged in a questionable manner on how the assets of SLIIT should be managed.
“SLIIT was established to provide funds for Mahapola. SLIIT was built on a piece of land that belonged to Mahapola, and SLIIT is responsible for paying part of its profits to Mahapola for the use of this property. However, the Board of Directors of SLIIT had undervalued the property, and only pays Rs.20 million per year for the 25-acre property,” he said.
In addition, Dr. Rajapakshe also charged that the SLIIT Board of Directors had transferred the assets of SLIIT to a company called Guarantee, which was set up to manage SLIIT. Dr. Rajapakshe said such a transfer was in contravention of the law, and resulted in Mahapola not getting the correct amount of funds from SLIIT. The issue has festered since 2015, when the transfer was made. In September 2018, Dr. Rajapakshe submitted a Cabinet paper, attempting to establish SLIIT as a fee-levying institution under the Government, but this has so far been unsuccessful.
Dr. Rajapakshe noted the Auditor General had also presented five statements with regard to the issue, in which he had said malpractices took place at SLIIT. One observation had stated that the MSTF had lost as much as Rs.1.6 billion due to the actions of trustees.
In the second complaint,Dr. Rajapakshe alleged theschool uniforms voucher system, introduced by the Ministry of Education, cost an extra Rs. 538.5 million for the Government. He noted the entire project cost Rs.2.68 billion, but if the Government followed the previous system,it would have only cost Rs. 2.14 billion.
“The cost to print vouchers was around Rs. 11 million, but more than 50% of the cost was spent to print them in colour, to include the picture of the Minister,” he added.He also said malpractices had taken place when the Ministry of Education introducedthe Suraksha Insurance Scheme last year, which covered all students in the country.
According to Dr. Rajapakshe, the Ministry of Education had spent Rs. 2.7 billion, and the Ministry had estimated around Rs. 400 million claims should have been covered at the end of 2018. Based on those numbers, Dr. Rajapakshe argued that the Government had spent an extra Rs. 2.3 billion for the insurance premium.“It was reported that Rs. 1.2 million was spent on reinsurance but the officials were not ready to provide the exact details.”
Dr. Rajapakshe also said the Ministry of Education had spent Rs. 29 million extra to print school textbooks in 2018. He noted Minister of Education Akila Viraj Kariyawasam had included a picture of himself and his message for each textbook, which led to include an extra page that caused an added cost of Rs. 29 million.
“It is an unnecessary thing to include the Minister’s picture and his message for textbooks; this is the first time such a thing happened, therefore I hope CIABOC will investigate these actions,” he added.
However, Dr. Rajapakshe stated that he would file a Writ Petition against CIABOC, if the Commission fails to show the progress of investigations from his complaints within two months.
He said if CIABOC delayed the investigation on his complaints,it would prove the Commission was inefficient to conduct investigations on large-scale corruptions. He noted CIABOC had been going behind the small corruptions, even though complaints on large-scale malpractices was lodged.
