14 July 2021 12:38 am Views - 2275
- SLIC is not a corporation per se. It is now a limited company. Due to these technical differences, whether or not some of these institutions can be examined by the Auditor General has been the issue
- We had to send them back, asking them to come prepared. When they came back, there were different kinds of issues to discuss
- Some can view this as a bribe that they are paying continuously from one election year up to the next election year, in order to maintain that particular vote
- Sri Lanka belongs to all of us and the brand of Sri Lanka Cricket is owned by the Sri Lankan people
- Our education needs a complete restructuring plan, higher education as well as school education
The Daily Mirror recently spoke to Chairman of the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) Prof. Charitha
Number one, we report to the Chamber, where they could take up the matter and develop different kinds of processes to address the issues.
Number two, we directly instruct the chief accounting officer meaning, the secretary of the relevant ministry, to take legal action if needed, or to take some procedural, technical, official steps for the issues.
Third is the most important thing, to get the issue into the public.
That is in my opinion is the best part and the most important part of this, where the issue comes to the public through media. At the end of the day the ownership of the country is with the people. So the people would know what is going on with this particular sector or area. I think in these three ways, we are implementing our experiences and engagements with COPE.
So what we do is to look at this as an oversight committee and to suggest to the executives to take up the decisions and report back to the people.
People say that D.E.W. Gunasekara and Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe were good chairs of the committee. But they were also from the government. So in my opinion, if they are delivering the expectation, then that is what we need to look at.
Now SLIC is not a corporation per se. It is now a limited company. Due to these technical differences, whether or not some of these institutions can be examined by the Auditor General (AG) has been the issue.
The present Litro Gas Board has also made its position clear that they would be hiring an outside auditor for their auditing purposes and that the AG’s Department cannot be allowed to perform an audit.
The COPE Chair and the parliament, as well as the Attorney General maintain a different view that the AG should be given the right to audit.
This was the issue that came into discussion and now the Litro Board has gone to court and they are maintaining their position. But we have summoned the SLIC Board Chairman and the Secretary of that Ministry and have instructed them to give directions to allow the AG Department to examine their accounts.
One of them was the relationship between the Government of Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka Cricket. They maintained the view that they are a body appointed by some sport organizations and that the Government is not financing them. They said that they have all authority to make use of the money, which they make.
The second point was that there were many interesting developments within their structure where they had been paying some of their clubs unjustifiable amounts of money.
Some can view this as a bribe that they are paying continuously from one election year up to the next election year, in order to maintain that particular vote.
We discussed this issue.
Also some mismanagement of properties was also discussed. The main issue that we had was a particular account which had been established outside of this country under the name of Sri Lanka Cricket.
There were some transactions done to that account. Now the Criminal Investigations Department also examined the issue. We have given them 6 months before we summon them again to review these issues.
challenges and issues and make Sri Lanka Cricket a proud cricketing nation again. We will be anyway exerting pressure on their financial administrative side when they are summoned again.
At the moment what we can see is that there are many different kinds of universities coming in. Those universities were registered under the Board of Investment Act, but were still affiliated to some prestigious universities outside the country and then they are providing recognised degrees. We have only one higher education act, the 1978 University Act. As there are many universities coming up, we need to look at the issue in a productive way. Some may ask that if the KDU Act is the productive way. My answer would be I don’t think so. But this is one attempt and one kind of practice which was accepted and established in the government in 2010. One particular issue that I observed was how we admit students into this university. The system that would be developed under this new act should have justifiable ways to select students into their system. There were different kinds of opinions, and as a democratic government I think we will look at these problematic parts.
American, Japanese and Indian engagements under the Asia Pacific strategy is moving forward. These relationships are developing along different lines. At the same time Chinese engagement too has developed into different levels. China has linked with Pakistan, Bangladesh and some other countries as well as Sri Lanka.
So now the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean are more political spaces where we all should engage as a country which does not have that much bargaining power in economic terms. But still we could make use of our position right now in this region to develop a kind of balance in our foreign policy positions on different topics. I have suggested within the government’s internal discussions that we should develop a couple of important think tanks under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We have at the moment Lakshman Kadirgamar Centre for Strategic Studies etc. We need to use these intellectual arms in order to develop good strategies to engage with these developing regional political engagements.
This discussion has been edited and condensed for clarity