Welfare benefit board admits to double payment error

The Welfare Benefits Board today acknowledged that a double payment had occurred due to an oversight during the distribution of a special New Year bonus to Aswesuma beneficiaries in the month of April.

In a statement issued by its Chairman Nimal Kotawalageda, the Board announced that the overpaid amounts would be recovered from the beneficiaries' Aswesuma payments for the current month.

The double payment had previously been revealed by Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa as well as the Free Lawyers organisation.

The Board, which operates under the Ministry of Finance, stated in its media release today that the double payment had affected the category of low-income beneficiaries. According to the statement, the cause was a slip file being uploaded twice due to an oversight.

The Board added that upon discovery of the error, it acted immediately to suspend the payments and instructed banks to reverse the transactions.

However, prior to that, 49,759 beneficiaries had already withdrawn a total of Rs. 248,795,000 (approximately Rs. 248.8 million) from their accounts. Those individuals will have this amount recovered through their Aswesuma payment for the current month.

The Welfare Benefits Board stated that no financial loss or irregularity to the government had occurred as a result. It further explained that the error arose because the system does not support making payments twice within a single month, which led to payments being processed through an external slip-file format to accommodate the urgent service requirement of paying the special bonus.