Ceylon Petroleum Corporation's (CPC) former acting Chairman Wasantha Ekanayake who was sacked from his post for asking CPC debtors to 'pay up or stop credit' has been transferred to the 'pool' without any responsibilities, the Sunday Times learns.
Mr. Ekanayake was a one-time Deputy Director of Finance at the Ministry of Finance and a Treasury representative on the CPC board.
As a result the employees’ medical insurance scheme is to be curtailed and the CPC has failed to pay the gratuity money for its retiring employees,” a CPC trade union official said.
“In turn the CPSTL also owes more than Rs.600 million to the private fuel bowser owners for their services over the past few months,” he said.
In addition to the CEB and SriLankan Airlines (Rs. 5.2 billion) and Mihin Lanka (Rs. 695 million), other agencies that have to pay the CPC are Railways (Rs. 3.4 billion), RDA (Rs. 477 million), Maganeguma programme (Rs. 214 million), SLTB (Rs. 90 million), West Coast Power Co. (Rs. 2.45 billion), Sri Lanka Navy (Rs. 10.36 billion), Sri Lanka Army (Rs. 5.40 billion), Sri Lanka Air Force (Rs. 1.37 billion) and the Sri Lanka Police (Rs. 32 million), the Ministry official said.
Petroleum Industries Minister Susil Premajayantha said the ministry was continuing to insist that state institutions should pay their debts to the CPC but the response was poor.
He said the biggest debtor the CEB had paid most of the money but the national carrier SriLankan was still do so.
He said that in the case of SriLankan and Mihin Lanka, he had suggested that some of the money allocated for the expansion plans of the airlines be used to pay the debts.
“All these institutions have a budgetary allocation and I have even suggested to the Treasury that without giving them the full allocation, a part of that money be transferred to settle the debts to the CPC,” he said.
The minister said he SriLankan had assured him that part of the debts would be settled within the next two weeks.
The Parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) in a report noted that there was a large amount of debts to be recovered by the CPC and the Cabinet had decided to grant Rs. 60 billion to cover the debt balances from the CEB and other government entities. The amount was granted recently by way of treasury bonds.
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