Treasury admits to Rs. 248.79 m duplicate Aswesuma payments

49,759 beneficiaries withdrew duplicate payments before transactions halted
Payment file for ‘poor’ category uploaded twice during festive allowance processing
This was related to Rs. 5,000 per household additional benefit apart from Rs. 10,000 monthly allowance
Govt. plans to recover payments from May Aswesuma disbursement

Close on the heels of the $ 2.5 million phishing attack, the Treasury has now admitted that duplicate Aswesuma welfare payments amounting to Rs. 248.79 million were mistakenly made to thousands of beneficiaries after a payment file was uploaded twice during processing of festive allowances.

In a statement issued by the Welfare Benefits Board, which comes under the Finance, Planning and Economic Development Ministry, it said the duplication occurred while processing additional allowances approved ahead of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

According to the statement, 1,698,412 beneficiary families were included in the payment process, with payment files grouped into batches of 90,000 before being forwarded to the Bank of Ceylon for distribution.

Officials said the error resulted in some beneficiaries classified under the ‘poor’ category receiving double payments for April.

The monthly benefit allowance currently paid to the ‘poor’ and ‘extremely poor’ social groups are Rs. 10,000 and Rs. 17,500, respectively. Apart from this, the Government had approved additional payments of Rs. 5,000 to the ‘poor’ and Rs. 7,500 to the ‘extremely poor’ category on account of the economic impact due to the Mideast crisis.

The Board said immediate action had been taken to suspend further duplicate transfers and instruct banks to reverse the excess payments back to Welfare Benefits Board accounts.

However, authorities acknowledged that 49,759 beneficiaries had already withdrawn the additional funds before the transactions could be halted.

The Board said Rs. 248,795,000 would now be recovered from May’s Aswesuma welfare disbursements.

Welfare Benefits Board Chairman Nimal Kotawelagedara defended the payment process, stating that officials had been operating under severe time pressure after the Government announced enhanced festive allowances shortly before April payments were scheduled.

He said the additional allowances had to be processed outside the normal digital payments system, resulting in one payment list being uploaded twice by mistake.

The incident comes amid increasing scrutiny over capacity, governance, cybersecurity, and payment control weaknesses across several State institutions following recent financial irregularities and the cyber-related theft at the Treasury.

Source: Daily FT