Sri Lanka’s poverty alleviation programme, Aswesuma, aimed at the poor and vulnerable, is to continue making cash transfers to families who are no longer eligible from December, for the first quarter of next year, in addition to more families being reinstated within the scheme, President Anura Kumar Dissanayake said in parliament yesterday (18).

“When the Aswesuma scheme was introduced it had four categories of beneficiaries, two of those four categories, which each have 400,000 people, are to be disqualified from the scheme by this 31st of December,” the President said.

“We have decided, from the two, the lower category is to have an extended period within the scheme for another three months, until March of 2025.”

Dissanayake further explained that the second category of beneficiaries that were to be moved out of the system are to be kept within the scheme for another year till 31st of December in 2025.

“There are issues pertaining as to who are eligible to receive the Aswesuma targeted cash transfers, and those who are not, therefore there will be a re-evaluation of the eligible families, for which the old mechanism of evaluating eligible families has been brought into question,” Dissanayake said.

In order to remedy the selection process, grama sevakas, samurdhi officers, development officers and social services officers are to be included in the evaluation of the legibility of families based on their information, with the goal of including the families who are in crucial need of the welfare scheme from next April, Dissanayake said.

Owing to the issue of qualified beneficiaries being unable to draw their Aswesuma welfare payments due to the lack of bank accounts, Dissanayake said the Central Bank is to take measures to enable the beneficiaries to open accounts without National Identity cards.

“The Aswesuma scheme was designed to be functional across banks. Normally, to open an account at a bank one needs to have an identity card. For one to receive an identity card, one must have a birth certificate. There are people who have been entered into the Aswesuma scheme as beneficiaries, but over the time period of a year, have not received the cash transfers due to their inability to open a bank account.”

Dissanayake said that an approximate 67,000 families who have been entered into the scheme have been unable to receive the targeted cash transfers due to the lack of identity cards to open a bank account, or the lack of birth certificates to obtain an identity that could enable them to open a bank account.

“Working with the Central Bank, we have decided to allow them a time period within which they can open bank accounts without the national identity card. Those families who are able to newly open accounts will be given each of cash transfers that were due to them, since the beginning of the scheme,” Dissanayake further said.

Drawing on indicators that have shown that the most impacted group as a consequence of the dire economic situation were children, Dissanayake said that a stipend of Rs. 6,000 for each child belonging to families of the Aswesuma beneficiaries scheme were to be disbursed, for the purpose of purchasing books and stationeries.

“For the children excluded from the scheme due to the exclusion of families from the scheme, these children are to be selected through the Education Ministry, before the start of the next school year,” Dissanayake said.