The University System: Politics and Audit Queries - The Island

The University System: Politics and Audit Queries

January 27, 2012, 8:05 pm 

I was a little surprised to read in today’s Island (26th January) that the UGC opposed Prof. R.O. Thattil’s appointment to the z-score inquiry committee on the grounds there were several audit queries when he was working as the Director of Peradeniya’s Post-Graduate Institute of Agriculture. To me the only news in this is that the Auditor General’s concerns are suddenly for the first time important to those in charge of our universities.

Thattil was Director and came up for renewal when I served on the UGC. At the time a brave administrator under him brought documentary evidence to the UGC showing several financial irregularities.There were also serious issues over a new building at the PGIA and tender procedures relating to it. Further, Peradeniya’s engineering academics had formed a design centre and got a contract for that building without open tendering, arguing that the centre was a government entity which did not require tendering and then huge sums were paid to lecturers as consultants. The Citizens’ Movement for Good Governance filed action. On my insistence, the UGC sent its Internal Auditor to PGIA and he issued a stinging report. I strongly argued that a renewal for Thattil was inappropriate but the PGIA Board "of eminent men and women" pressured the UGC. The renewal was delayed but finally given ignoring all the evidence.

How is it that those administering our universities suddenly take the Auditor General’s reports seriously? I put it to you that in Sri Lanka corrupt people are useful in high office because they will be obedient and advance the interests of their masters rather than their institutions to which they give token service. The only usefulness of the Auditor General’s reports seems to be in giving excuses for leaving people out when they are inconvenient, as for example in not consulting Prof. Thattil in the z-score debacle which he probably understands better than anyone else in Sri Lanka.

Too many crooked people are at the helms of our educational institutions. At a time when our university students are agitated, it is time we really had honest people in charge if our students are to take us seriously. To start, we need our government to always take the AG seriously. And indeed, I am really happy to see some progress in this important area in the way COPE’s DEW Gunasekara is giving ear to the AG’s concerns. Is it because he is from the old left?

Prof. S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole