COPE and COPA toothless tigers?

by Saman Indrajith

More than 2,000 recommendations made by the parliamentary watchdog committees, COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) and COPA (Committee on Public Accounts) with the objective of preventing corruption in public institutions have not been implemented by the relevant state agencies and officials, parliament sources told the Sunday Island.

Corrupt practices continued despite repeated warnings and recommendations by the two committees which uncover frauds after expending much effort and time, these sources said pointing out that among those institutions ignoring the implementation of recommendations were the Department of Inland Revenue, Customs Department, Excise Department, Education Ministry, Department of Wildlife Conservation and some local government bodies.

Sources alleged that some officials who had charges against them have deliberately kept away from committee sessions.

“It has been noticed that officials responsible for many instances of financial misappropriation find excuses such as leaving the country when they are summoned before the COPE or COPA,” a senior parliament official said.

Former Speaker Karu Jayasuriya in an attempt to promote transparency and accountability of the COPE and COPA opened previously closed door meetings to the media.

“The committees expose wrong doings of officials in public sector institutions and ministries and then the media reports them. COPE and COPA make recommendations to rectify the errors but the malpractices continue. There is no way for the Committees to compel the officials to act on their recommendations. So the committees have been often called toothless tigers,” the official said.

Incumbent COPE Chairman, Prof Charitha Herath, said that the situation could not be changed without amending Standing Orders of Parliament. “We expose massive losses and waste of public money. Yet we have no powers to compel the officials to implement our recommendations. For that purpose existing Standing Orders should be changed,” Prof Herath said.

Asked to comment, incumbent Chairman of COPA, Prof Tissa Vitarana said that this issue had been raised several times at COPA meetings. “Some officials have acted on recommendations while many have ignored them. When the officials do not rectify bad practices that would raise a question of accountability of state owned enterprises and other public sector institutions such as ministries.

“COPE and COPA are key committees that oversees state owned enterprises and examines the accounts relating to appropriation of the sums granted by Parliament to meet the public expenditure. Since there is continued non-compliance, at the last meeting I suggested seeking the opinion of the Attorney General to find whether the Auditor General could file legal action on behalf the COPA against the official who fail to comply by deadlines given to them by the committee.

“We intend to give a deadline of one or two months and if the officials continue to ignore the committee recommendations they could be taken before the courts under the proposal that I have made,” Vitarana said.

Parliament should amend Standing Orders to give more teeth to the COPE and COPA, he added.