The Hon. Waruna Liyanage
Hon. Waruna Liyanage raised concerns that co-operative rural banks must deposit Rs. 10,000 with Divisional Secretariats to obtain pawning licences, diverting member funds from societies intended for welfare purposes. Citing about 250,000 affected members in Ratnapura and 2.5 million nationwide, he asked that the system be regularized or the fee collection stopped, and proposed restoring a People’s Bank facility to allow co-operative rural banks to conduct pawning without this licensing burden.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Mr. Speaker, my first supplementary: There are about 300 registered co-operative societies, and many co-operative rural banks obtain a pawning licence by depositing Rs. 10,000 at the Divisional Secretariat. These institutions exist for members’ welfare. When each bank deposits Rs. 10,000, a large sum flows to the Treasury, affecting members’ funds—about 250,000 members in Ratnapura District and nearly 2.5 million nationwide.
¶ 02 Moreover, many bank societies are not registered; thus paying fees to Divisional Secretariats raises issues. Therefore, we need to regularize this or else stop collecting these monies. Please restore the facility through People’s Bank so co-operative rural banks can conduct pawning without this licence burden.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 9 June 2026 ·No. 23706 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
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/lk/speeches/2776
Cite as: The Hon. Waruna Liyanage. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 9 June 2026. No. 23706. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/2776