Rs.1035 million loss from Susil`s two cabinet papers

The government has lost millions of rupees due to inappropriate printing of text books for the year 2008. The tenders for printing of these text books were placed by the Department of Educational Publications with Sarvodaya, Wishvalekha and Shasthrodaya graphic and printing institutions. The minister has on two occasions submitted cabinet papers to cancel the recovery of the loss due to the inappropriate printing and the government had to incur a loss of Rs.1035 million say reports.

The relevant institutions were bound by a tender placed in 2007 to make available 7,428,000 copies of 91 text books and supplementary readers to the Department of Educational Publications on 15.11.2007. However they had extended the date to supply the text books several times and finally decided to supply them before 28th April, 2008. According to tender process if a government tender is delayed the defaulting party has to pay the government 150% of the value of the tender and when the number of books exceed a fine of Rs.100,000 has to be paid to the government.

However, the minister has mediated to exempt the printing institutions from the amount they had to pay the government for delaying the supply of books. Minister Susil Premajayanth has submitted the cabinet paper to recover demurrage for books that had to be handed over on 15th November, 2007 only after four months allowing the defaulters to pay only Rs.886.5 million instead of Rs.1035 million they owed the government.

However, another cabinet paper the minister submitted on 8th July proposes not to charge demurrage from the relevant printing institutions and not to charge the cost that the government had to incur due to printing those books in another printing institution. As such, the first cabinet paper reduced the money owed to the government to Rs.886.5 million and in the second cabinet paper the whole amount was taken off.

The minister has also, in the cabinet paper he submitted in July, proposed a curious proposal to recover the loss due to inappropriate printing of the books. He has proposed to retrench 5% from the total number of books as substandard books without any investigation.