Minister of Rural Development, Social Security and Community Empowerment Upali Pannilage has rejected reports that Aswesuma welfare payments to nearly 1.4 million people have been suspended, calling them factually incorrect.
Speaking at an awareness programme for Samurdhi officers in Anuradhapura on Thursday (29), the minister said 1,206,000 people currently receive Aswesuma benefits and that no reduction in the beneficiary population has taken place as a result of the ongoing review, the Daily Mirror reported.
The revised list of 991,000 beneficiaries selected under the first phase of the review has already been published, he said. Of those, about 989,000 are currently receiving payments — an increase of roughly 2,000 beneficiaries under the revised list, not a cut. A further 215,000 beneficiaries fall under the programme’s second phase, which is scheduled for review next year.
What the 1.4 million figure actually referred to
The number at the centre of the dispute comes from the Welfare Benefits Board’s re-certification results, which this desk reported on 28 October.
In that round, 1,391,830 applicants were found not to qualify under the new criteria out of a review population of 2,383,630. That is a count of applicants who did not meet the threshold — a group that includes people who were never receiving payments. It is a different figure from the 331,653 existing recipients removed from the registry, which is the number that actually describes benefits stopping.
Some outlets compressed the larger number into a claim that 1.4 million people “will lose benefits.” This desk did not: our report took the wording from the Sinhala original, which says that number did not qualify (සුදුසුකම් නොලබා), and set out explicitly that the two figures are different populations. The minister’s correction is consistent with that reading.
A small unexplained difference
The minister gives the revised first-phase list as 991,000. The Welfare Benefits Board’s published figure, carried by EconomyNext, Hiru News and the Daily FT, was 991,800 — made up of 628,658 under the “Poor” category and 363,142 under “Extremely Poor”. The gap of about 800 is most likely rounding in the minister’s remarks, but the filing does not say so.
Not reported
The minister’s three figures are internally consistent — 991,000 plus 215,000 equals the 1,206,000 he gave as the current total — but the filing does not state that relationship, nor explain why the 989,000 said to be actually receiving payments falls 2,000 short of the first-phase list. It gives no date for the second-phase review, no outcome for the ten-day appeal window opened with the first list, and no response from the outlets whose reporting the minister disputed.
Single source. A search of the other verified newsrooms found no independent report of these remarks; the Daily Mirror appears to be alone in carrying them.
