The government has incurred a loss of over Rs.5,564 million due to the informal provision of housing loans during the tenure of Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa as the Housing Minister from 2015-2019.
The loans of 53,709 beneficiaries given when Sajith Premadasa was the housing minister had to be restricted due to this, National Housing Development Authority (NHDA) Chairman Rajeev Sooriyarachchi said.
Due to the effort the government had been able to save over Rs.7,852 million. During the period of 2015-2019 when the current Opposition Leader was the housing minister, seven housing projects had been initiated. National Housing Development Authority Chairman said that these informal housing loans have mostly happened in 2018 and 2019.
Years 2018 and 2019 are periods in which the Local Government Election and the Presidential Election were held in Sri Lanka.
In the year 2019 alone, the construction of 62,994 houses had been started although allocations were only for 40,500 houses.
During 2015 and 2019, Premadasa had started the construction of 341,510 houses, but only 233,578 houses had received the necessary provisions.
Accordingly, it was not possible to provide future loan installments for 1,07,932 housing recipients.The reason is the lack of necessary provisions.
(dailynews.lk)
(This story, originally published by dailynews.lk has not been edited by SLM staff)
