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COPE to probe SLC
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By Sandun A. Jayasekera
The parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) said yesterday it would probe the activities of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) focusing mainly on how it spent Rs.7.19 billion on three cricket stadiums and the payment of Cricket World Cup bonus, legal fees and the sale of tickets.
A highly placed parliament source told Daily Mirror the SLC had not prepared a Corporate Plan, Action Plan or a Budget for this year to be submitted to the Auditor General and to the COPE as required by law but had made a special payment of Rs.14,965,000 to 133 employees as World Cup bonuses.
He said formal approval was not sought for the payment of world cup bonus and 134 employees have been exempted from the bonus and that the criteria for selection for the payment of bonus were not clear.
The source said this had happened in spite of overspending nearly Rs.3.89 billion to construct the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium (MRICS), to renovate the R. Premadasa International Cricket Stadium (RPICS) and the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium (PICS).
The SLC cricket had spent a colossal Rs.7.19 billion for the three projects while the estimated cost was only Rs.3.3 billion. Meanwhile members of the former and present Cricket Interim Committee (CIC) have been summoned by COPE to appear before it on July 6 where some startling revelations had been made.
The source said the ‘Examination on the 2010 Performance and Current Affairs’ of the SLC prepared and submitted to COPE by the Auditor General’s Department had found there was no proper recruitment procedure or an approved cadre for the SLC.
He said there had been only 17 in the staff of the Sri Lanka Cricket Board in 1996, the year Sri Lanka won the Cricket World Cup while the SLC’s current cadre of 267 includes overage and under age employees but most of its work had been outsourced.
It was learnt that COPE had called for a breakdown of the initial estimates and actual expenditure for the three projects. The SLC has printed 272,318 tickets to the value of Rs.96,218,150 for the 12 matches matches played in Sri Lanka. The value of the tickets sold was Rs.89,347,890 but only Rs.67,384,490 had been accounted for leaving a deficit of Rs.21,963,400 and while 50,847 complementary tickets had been printed no approval had been granted by the interim committee to print or issue complementary tickets. The details of these tickets were not available to be audited.
The SLC’s legal fees had amounted to some Rs.51 million paid out between 2007 and 2010. It has been observed that Rs.17,189,485 had been paid as legal charges last year for the case instituted against SLC by South Cricket Club alone requesting it to hold elections.
According to the Auditor General’s report SLC had miserably failed to provide replies to audit queries for matters that had arisen during the past three years except for 25 audit queries.
By the beginning of this year, SLC had outstanding bank loans, bank overdrafts and ICC loans to the value of Rs.2,373 million in addition to the overspending of Rs.3.89 billion for the three cricket stadiums.
The source said the COPE session continued for more than three hours and a volley of questions to the members of the present and old interim committee came from both the opposition and government MPs.
However, COPE Chairman and senior minister D.E.W. Gunasekara when contacted by Daily Mirror for further information declined to comment saying he was bound by parliamentary privileges not to disclose information to a third party.
“I am sorry I can’t divulge information on what transpired at the COPE sessions for the reason of parliamentary privilege. What I can say is that the inquiries will continue. When the report was presented to Parliament you will know everything,” Mr. Gunasekara said. He said he advised the new interim committee chairman Upali Dharmadasa to put the house in order.
Some members of the two interim committees who were not present were noticed to show cause as to why they failed to appear before COPE on the day they were summoned. A new interim committee was appointed five days before the date fixed for the COPE proceedings, the source added. (Daily Mirror online)
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