Sri Lanka’s Finance Ministry has acknowledged that thousands of Aswesuma welfare beneficiaries received double payments for April following what officials described as an “accidental duplicate upload of payment files”
In a statement, the Welfare Benefits Board said a payment “slip file” had been uploaded twice during the processing of additional festive allowances approved ahead of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.
Authorities said nearly 1.7 million beneficiary families were included in the payment process, with files arranged in batches of 90,000 before being forwarded to the Bank of Ceylon for distribution.
According to officials, the duplication led to some beneficiaries in the “poor” category receiving double payments.
The Ministry said immediate measures were taken to stop further duplicate payments and banks were instructed to reverse the excess funds to the Welfare Benefits Board’s accounts.
However, authorities confirmed that 49,759 beneficiaries had already withdrawn the additional payments before the transactions could be suspended.
The Government stated that approximately Rs. 248.7 million would be recovered from May’s Aswesuma payments.
The incident has drawn criticism and prompted calls for a parliamentary investigation, with the Free Lawyers organisation alleging that nearly Rs. 500 million may have been irregularly disbursed through the welfare scheme.
The organisation compared the matter to recent controversies involving mistaken state payments, including incidents where millions of dollars meant for foreign payments were transferred to third-party accounts.
In a letter addressed to the Speaker, the group questioned whether the incident resulted from negligence, weak financial oversight, or wider failures within Treasury and Finance Ministry systems.
Welfare Benefits Board Chairman Nimal Kotawelagedara defended the payment process, stating that officials had been operating under significant time pressure after the Government announced increased festive allowances shortly before April payments were scheduled.
He said the additional allowances had to be processed outside the regular digital system, which resulted in one payment list being uploaded twice by mistake.
