Aswesuma was paid twice by mistake - it will be adjusted from next month - An announcement.

The Welfare Benefits Board has issued an official statement clarifying the truth regarding the circulating information that Aswesuma beneficiaries have been paid twice. The government's primary objective was to expedite the payment of these allowances to beneficiaries for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year festive season in April, and accordingly, arrangements were made to provide the relevant funds to all beneficiaries of the first and second phases before April 10, 2026.

In addition, the Board states that the government had decided to provide a special allowance with the aim of providing relief to the people affected by the war situation in the Middle East region. Under this special allowance, Rs. 7,500 was to be paid for the extremely poor category, Rs. 5,000 for the poor category, and Rs. 2,500 for vulnerable families. However, due to the lack of technical facilities to make payments twice a month through the integrated welfare benefits information system, steps have been taken to pay this special New Year allowance through files prepared outside the system.

For this urgent payment process, a list of nearly 1.7 million beneficiary families was prepared and uploaded to the Bank of Ceylon system as SLIP files with a capacity of 90,000 files. Due to an oversight, one file was entered into the system twice, revealing that a double payment had been made to a group of beneficiaries in the 'poor' category. As soon as this error was identified, the Welfare Benefits Board immediately acted to suspend the relevant payments and notify the banks to credit the funds back to the Board's accounts.

Since 49,759 beneficiaries had withdrawn Rs. 248,795,000 from their accounts before the double payments were suspended, it has not been possible for banks to recover these funds. Accordingly, the Board emphasizes that arrangements have already been made to deduct the excess amount received by the relevant beneficiaries from the upcoming May Aswesuma allowance. The Board further states that this incident has not resulted in any financial loss or financial irregularity to the government, and it occurred solely due to a technical reason that arose while making urgent payments based on service requirements.