The parliamentary Committee On Public Enterprises (COPE) yesterday instructed Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) Director General Anusha Palpita to inquire as to what happened to a Trc-owned super luxury vehicle worth some Rs.20 million, a parliamentary source said. He said the vehicle had gone missing during the term of office of a previous management and the present management had nothing to do with it.

The COPE has found no trace of the vehicle and may refer the matter to the CID.

The source said COPE had also found that a previous TRC management had obtained Rs.22 million from the World Bank in 2000 to prepare a corporate plan.

He said the corporate plan presented to COPE consisted of only five pages. COPE Chairman and Senior Minister D.E.W. Gunasekara had instructed the matter to be referred to the CID.

Meanwhile, Minister Gunasekara said COPE would hold its final session on November 18 and might hand over the final report to Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa on December 1 so that parliament could discuss the report at the committee stage of the budget debate.

According to COPE it had investigated 249 government-owned institutions and found that losses incurred by them during 2007–2009 amounted to a staggering Rs.19 billion.

Minister Gunasekara said some of the loss-making institutions included the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC), Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), the Rupavahini, Lankaputhra Bank and Mihin Lanka among others.

“We will recommend ways and means of preventing or minimising losses at public enterprises and a series of financial and administrative guidelines. It will be mandatory for annual reports to be presented before the second half of the following year,” the minister said.

He said another recommendation was to make all top officials and board members accountable for financial or administrative malpractices even after they had left their places of employment.

Source: Daily Mirror - Sri Lanka