Public assistance vital to defeat corruption

By Shanika Sriyananda

Public assistance is vital to defeat corruption as parliamentarians, the Commission of Bribery and Corruption, the police or religious leaders alone cannot fight corruption, said Chairman of the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) Wijeyadasa Rajapaksha. He was addressing a public seminar at the first meeting of the 'Coalition Against Corruption (CAC), last Friday.

The main mission of the CAC is to create a platform to defeat corruption in Sri Lanka bringing a Parliamentary group, anti corruption institutions, civil movements and activists together to fight corruption.

Revealing some major malpractices in State institutions, he said that the post of Accountant of the Bank of Ceylon had been vacant for nine-years and the Bank had paid over Rs. 127 million for a foreign expert for his services for 18 months.

According to Rajapaksha, the two state banks, the Bank of Ceylon and People's Bank have to recover Rs. 25 billion from the country's top businessmen and those millionaires thrived on public savings. Rajapaksha said that the Prevention of Bribery and Corruption Act was prepared in an adhoc manner and prevention of bribery and corruption had been a political pledge since 1948.

"The Bill was passed in Parliament to bring to book those who were involved in bribery and corruption but the important phase stating that it is applicable to all corruption did in the past, had been omitted in the Act", he said

He also said that 98 state institutions had been sold between 1993 and 1998 and the government earned Rs. 77 billion by selling these institutions. "This revenue was used to pay five loan instalments'', he said.

Rajapaksha said instead of selling these institutions to pay loan instalments, the government could have easily settled the loans with the money earned by selling the eight-acre land that belonged to the Ports Authority.

He said that the adhoc activities of the Board of Investment (BOI) is a hindrance to the country's development and over 50 per cent of the country's national economy had been affected as a result of this.

"The BOI does not have a proper management plan and a large number of goods enter the country without any taxes being paid.

The BOI cannot import food under their label but the new trend is that some food items such as green gram enter the country labelled as animal food. The stocks end up in supermarkets", he added.

Member, Public Accounts Council Dayasiri Jayasekara, Former Auditor General S.C. Mayadunne and J.C. Weliamunne Executive Director of the Transparency International also spoke.