A special audit covering Sri Lanka’s 8th and 9th Parliaments has found irregularities in fuel allocations, vehicle privileges and related spending attached to the offices of the Speaker, Deputy Speaker, Chairman of Committees and Secretary-General.
There were no effective restrictions on the Speaker’s fuel consumption, which could be drawn without a specified limit, Daily Mirror reported. In the final two years of the 9th Parliament the Speaker’s office averaged 3,994 litres a month in 2023 and 6,122 litres in 2024, pushing annual fuel spending to Rs. 19.37 million and Rs. 26.05 million respectively.
The audit gave the increases as 66% for 2023 and 155% for 2024. Both are measured against 2022, not against each other: a 66% rise implies a 2022 baseline of about 2,406 litres a month, and that baseline raised by 155% returns 6,135 litres — within a fraction of the reported 2024 figure.
An extra vehicle and overlapping cars
Presidential Secretariat circulars entitle a Deputy Minister — and, by extension, the Deputy Speaker — to three official vehicles. Auditors found a fourth, private vehicle was fuelled anyway across 2023 and 2024, taking 21,299 litres worth about Rs. 8.55 million. The three official vehicles separately exceeded their limits by 6,980 litres in 2023, and two of them by a further 1,515 litres in 2024.
The Chairman of Committees, a post the audit describes as subordinate to the Deputy Speaker, held three official vehicles and unlimited fuel even though no formal decision had set an entitlement for the position.
Vehicle logbooks showed the Secretary-General ran two official vehicles simultaneously during overlapping periods in 2022 and 2023. That office drew 15,063 litres between 2022 and 2024 — roughly 2,300 litres a year more than a Ministry Secretary, who sits in the highest fuel-entitlement band in the public service.
A figure that does not reconcile
Sri Lanka Mirror, reporting the same National Audit Office document, attributes it to Auditor General Samudika Jayaratne and puts the longer arc at 299,146 litres and Rs. 75.26 million for Speakers between 2016 and 2024.
One figure in that account does not hold. It values the Secretary-General’s 15,063 litres at nearly Rs. 2.3 million — about Rs. 153 a litre. Daily Mirror’s Rs. 6.07 million implies about Rs. 403 a litre, consistent with the rate implied by two other figure pairs in the same audit. The lower number appears to have been carried over from the “2,300 litres” cited alongside it.
Daily Mirror did not give the year of the Cabinet approval it dates to November 5, which granted the Deputy Speaker privileges equivalent to a Non-Cabinet Minister, and no response from Parliament’s administration has been reported.
