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Sri Lanka to tighten NGO Act

COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan government would amend the Act which deals with both local and foreign NGOs to enable the agencies concerned to probe their activities and take appropriate action against them, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka told the English paper Daily Mirror online.

It quoted the Premier as saying a Ministerial Committee appointed to propose amendments to the Act has already put forward a draft document which will be taken up by the new Parliament.

“The draft document has already been sent to the Attorney- General for his advice and it includes a proposal to give the government all the powers to take action against Non- Governmental Organisations,” it said.

The Prime Minister noted that several NGOs and INGOs were found to have acted against the sovereignty of Sri Lanka in recent times but appropriate action cannot be taken against them as the laws under the NGO Act are weak. The website quoted the Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Administration which deals with NGOs, R.D Newton Perera, as saying the government also wanted to probe the financial accounts of several NGOs. He told the website that the government would seek to obtain details of the monthly expenditure of some NGOs as, according to him, most of the money obtained by them is being used for their personal welfare and not the displaced people.

Last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Rohitha Bogollagama complained to two visiting envoys that some countries were channelling funds via International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) and local Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to destabilise democracy.

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