• To recover Rs. 248,795,000 via May payment deduction 

Acknowledging that a double payment of Aswesuma benefits occurred in April of this year (2026) due to a technical error, the Welfare Benefits Board said that it would recover Rs. 248,795,000 that could not be stopped in time after being withdrawn by beneficiaries, through deductions from this month’s (May) Aswesuma payments.

Issuing a statement yesterday (7), the Board stated the April Aswesuma allowance had originally been scheduled to be paid before the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, with payments to both Phase I and Phase II beneficiaries released on 10 April.

"In addition to the regular monthly allowance, an extra payment had also been approved under a Cabinet of Ministers decision to provide relief to families affected by global economic pressures linked to the Middle East conflict. Accordingly, families in the extremely poor category were granted Rs. 7,500, those in the poor category Rs. 5,000, and those identified as vulnerable Rs. 2,500 as a special New Year allowance."

However, the Board explained that the Integrated Welfare Management System does not support making two separate payments within the same month. As a result, it added that the special allowance had to be processed outside the system in order to ensure that funds reached the beneficiaries before the New Year.

To facilitate this, the Board stated that a list covering nearly 1.79 million beneficiary families was compiled within a short period by the Information Technology and Finance Divisions. The statement read that payments were then processed through the banking system by uploading slip files in batches. "It was during this process that a slip file had been uploaded twice by mistake, leading to duplicate payments being made to a group of beneficiaries in the ‘poor’ category."

The Board stated that it acted immediately upon detecting the error, instructing banks to halt the relevant payments and return the funds to its accounts. However, by that time, some beneficiaries had already withdrawn the money.

According to the statement, a total of 49,759 beneficiaries had withdrawn duplicate payments amounting to Rs. 248,795,000 before the transactions could be stopped. The Board stated that arrangements had been made to recover these amounts from the May 2026 Aswesuma payments.

It stressed that due to the swift action taken, no financial loss or irregularity had ultimately occurred to the Government.