Honesty at Deyata Kirula

REPORTS that the Police is investigating into a Rs. 39 million fraud at the ongoing Deyata Kirula exhibition raises further questions on financial responsibility regarding public expenditure. According to reports, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has begun an investigation on the Chief Executive Officer at the secretarial office of the Deyata Kirula National Exhibition 2013 for allegedly cheating and misappropriation an amount of Rs.39 million in contrast to the tender procedure.

Secretary to the Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology H.M. Gunasekara had lodged a complaint with the CID, stating that Kanthi Gunawardana, the Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology, was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer of the Deyata Kirula Exhibition 2013. The complainant said subsequently Gunawardana was interdicted from the post of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Deyata Kirula 2013 over committing frauds while implementing several projects at the Deyata Kirula site in Ampara.

The complainant alleged that the contract relating to the construction of temporary toilets had been given to a private company without the approval of the Procurement and Technical Evaluation Committee by the CEO of the Deyata Kirula exhibition and thereby paid an additional payment of Rs. 1.7 million to the contractor.

He has further alleged that the suspect had paid another additional payment amounting to Rs. 12 million for the construction of a reading room in the Deyata Kirula exhibition premises. He also charged that she had approved another additional payment of Rs. 11 million for a contractor to construct a canteen and further paid an additional payment of Rs. 255,000 for flower decorations in the site.

This is just a mild insight into the massive financial oversights of the Deyata Kirula exhibitions that have diverted away from their initial vision of providing development to rural regions. The current episode, covering the four districts of Polonnaruwa, Trincomalee, Ampara and Batticaloa, is estimated to have cost a whopping Rs. 60 billion. It is inexplicable that such a mammoth amount of money is being spent with no regard to financial accountability or transparency.

For the 2013 version, the Government allocated Rs. 11.316 million for projects identified by the divisional development committees and district development committees and Rs. 45,375 million for development projects earmarked to be completed under the 2012-2014 Medium Term Budgetary Framework along with the renovation to the Ampara Higher Technical Institute and Trincomalee, China Bay and Codbay Fishery Harbour at Rs. 2,696 million.

Moreover, Rs.500 million was allocated for a housing project in the four districts, which includes 100 houses for public servants on the basis of non-recovery of the value of the land. Last year the Deyata Kirula that was held in Oyamaduwa came with an auxiliary cost of Rs. 21.7 billion for related development projects.

If these costs are anything to go by, then the entire expense of the exhibitions since 2009 would be a truly astounding amount. Yet there are no records of measures to minimise corruption such as public accounts being presented to Parliament or even simple auditing.

The spending of such colossal amounts of money really begs the question of whether public funds are used for public good.