The Hon. R.M. Jayawardhana

¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, we discussed this at length again. We inquired into it. Hon. Member, you too know that frauds worth tens of millions of rupees have taken place in rural banks. Some of those could not be uncovered by certain provincial audits. There needs to be clarity on auditing here. There are audits at both Central Government and Provincial Council levels. Audits of rural banks are conducted at the Provincial level. Over time, due to delays and not doing those audits properly, actual frauds have not been detected. However, recently, particularly in the North Western Province and also to a significant extent in the Central Province that you represent, audits have been conducted and we have confirmed frauds amounting to tens of millions of rupees. Recently, the Ministry has intervened through our Commissioneress and we are now intervening in the Provinces. If the Provinces cannot conduct these audits, the Central Government is also engaging in alternative audit processes to ascertain the extent of frauds and corruption that have actually occurred. According to our understanding, in the Western Province alone, frauds and corruption exceeding Rs. 500 million have occurred. In the Central, North Western and all other Provinces too, frauds and corruption have occurred. We are examining these and strengthening the audit processes required for intervention. We will correct this based on information obtained through audits.