The Hon. Lal Premanath
Hon. Lal Premanath raised concerns about delays in computerizing Samurdhi Banks and the continued reliance on handwritten, paper-based transactions. He stated that beneficiaries face difficulties such as not receiving funds, being unable to withdraw savings, or obtain loans, and asked whether an interim SMS-based programme could be introduced to inform and guide them.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, my second supplementary is linked to the Minister’s answer regarding computerization and transparency of Samurdhi Banks. For decades, successive governments have discussed computerizing the system, yet many transactions are still handwritten and paper-based. Many innocent beneficiaries are unfamiliar with these processes and we receive numerous complaints: not receiving funds, not being able to withdraw savings, not being able to obtain loans. I believe technical weaknesses contribute to this. In the interim, can you implement a short-term programme—perhaps via SMS—to inform and guide beneficiaries?
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 20 January 2026 ·No. 23200 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- 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/8964
Cite as: The Hon. Lal Premanath. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 20 January 2026. No. 23200. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/8964