Public Finance Committee to probe allegations into coal term tender

The Parliamentary Committee on Public Finance (COPF) will conduct an investigation into the allegations against the irregularities in the tender on purchasing coal, its chairperson MP Harsha de Silva said.

The probe will be conducted in accordance with a request made by Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera, the lawmaker added.

On Wednesday (Sep 08), Minister Wijesekera had mentioned in a tweet that he made a written request from MP Harsha de Silva to conduct an inquiry into the coal term tender, as the false allegations levelled against the awarded tender has created questions on transparency and pricing.

“I hope PFC will expedite the inquiry”, he said further in the tweet.

MP Harsha de Silva said that following the discussion with the Speaker of Parliament, another discussion with the Auditor General and the Secretary to the Ministry of Power and Energy is scheduled for today (Sep 08) to give necessary directives on conducting an immediate audit of the process.

The request letter of Minister Wijesekera seeking an investigation has mentioned that the Ministry of Power and Energy and Lanka Coal Company (Pvt) Ltd. will provide all required information and documentation in order to assist the inquiry.

 Meanwhile, the COPF has suggested organizing a series of awareness programs for the MPs to educate them on the prevailing economic crisis.

As the first phase of this program, all the MPs are expected to be informed on the correlation between inflation and the interest rate, MP Harsha de Silva explained.

Further, he emphasized that the participation of all the MPs is necessary irrespective of their political party affiliations.