Sri Lanka Inventors Commission:

Protracted fraud at Inventors’ Fund

Chamikara Weerasinghe

Investigations conducted by Sri Lanka Inventors Commission to get the full truth of its fund disbursements after its recent finding of an anatomy of a funding scandal within the Commission linked with its Inventors’ Fund, have revealed that funds totaling to Rs. 182,000,000 has been misused by its officers in what seemed to be a protracted financial fraud.

The Commission’s funds totaling to Rs. 18.2 million have been spent on the same inventors over and over among 14 persons, who have been favoured by Commission’s Projects and Programs Department, said Inventors’ Commissioner Prof. Mahinda Pathegama.

The moneys of the Inventors’ fund have been used to provide for this selected few of 14 persons without adhering to the Commission’s principles or criteria for disbursing funds.

”Investigations have revealed many files missing.” explained Prof.Pathegama.

The funds are to be given to competent inventors who have come up with inventions with technological value to commercialize them. In some cases officials have given millions of rupees to school boy productions such as paddy-husk hearths, he said. A director has approved a grant of Rs. 1.5 million to commercialize a clay filter which has no technological value whatsoever, he said.

Inventors’ Commissioner Prof.Mahinda Pathegama has terminated services of a Director and a Research Assistant attached to the Commission’s Projects and Programs Department for their alleged involvement in a fraudulent fund disbursement scheme inside the Commission.

Asked if they were terminated on the grounds that they were not permanent workers, he said, they have been kept under probation even by those Commissioners who preceded me.

Prof. Pathegama has also interdicted services of another Program Officer, a clerk attached to the Commission’s Financial Division and a driver pending inquiries.

”They were interdicted for allegedly disturbing the process of on going investigations and inquiries,” he said.

Asked how could they be of disturbance to the on going inquiry, he said there have been instances where some files of the loan recipients of some inventors were misplaced or hidden. There have been a lot of malpractices of such nature, he explained.

Asked how that these malpractices have continued when there is a Commissioner, Prof. Pathegama said, “The reason for this was all Inventors’ Commissioners come as part-timers.

They do not get to spend much time in the office as Commissioners and this has led the workers to exercise an undue authority over the funds at will and to misuse them,” he added.