A report prepared by Parliament watchdog; Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) on Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) has recommended that SLIIT be taken over by a Ministry after considering the contents of other Cabinet Memoranda pertaining to the institution.
The above report prepared on the basis of an investigation by the Auditor General’s Department has recommended that the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology be recognized as a non-governmental institution and that the decision taken by the Cabinet of Ministers on 24 Many 2017 to not to include the said institution under any of the purview of the Ministry be reconsidered.
The report, which was tabled in Parliament on 6 April, also recommended that the situation be changed and the institution be taken over by the Mahapola Fund and that students be given the opportunity to pursue higher education subject under a reasonable fee structure.
The COPE recommended that action be taken under the Public Property Act against all parties involved in the action taken to deprive the government of its ownership of SLIIT and its control by an agreement signed on 12 May 2015 without any formal authority.
The committee members pointed out that the privatization of SLIIT appears to be a complex and problematic process of organizational fraud and the legal ability to summon any institution funded by the Government to appear before the COPE.
The COPE will request Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywarden to give a date to debate the report in Parliament.
