The date December 26, 2004 would be remembered by almost all Sri Lankans, a Sunday, Unduwap Full Moon Poya Day, Boxing Day to Christians; Sri Lanka was playing cricket against New Zealand there. The time was about 10.30 a.m. I had finished my prayers and was reading pages 799-801of the Treasury of Truth by Rev. Weragoda Sarada Thera. This book was an English translation of the Dhammapada with paintings and I used to read a few pages every Sunday. This day I was going through a very important section which explained how one could extend loving kindness to others in 480 different ways. A few months before this, a leftist politician was querying how a Sinhalese Buddhist could extend his or her meritorious thoughts or loving kindness towards V. Prabhakaran, LTTE leader who was responsible for death of hundreds of thousands of people, including the President of Sri Lanka and Prime Minister of India. I thought this page answered that question and I started to practice it daily covering 40 different ways every day. All of a sudden, I heard a big rumpus from the upstairs living area where they were watching the cricket match. My two daughters-in-law were trying to contact their parents to find out how they were, as a tsunami had struck the south-western coast line bringing unimaginable havoc to the entire area.
The World Bank (WB) also came to our aid offering us assistance to build houses. The programme was called Owner Driven Housing Programme as the responsibility of carrying out construction was thrust upon owners themselves. WB offered Rs. 250,000 to owners of houses which were fully damaged and Rs. 100.000 for those houses which were partially damaged. The criteria for the demarcation was provided by the WB.
TAFREN and housing grants
There were about 54,000 beneficiaries who submitted applications for aid successfully. They were from 22 Divisions along the coast line from Wadamarachchi, Mullaitivu, Batticaloa. Tissamaharama, Galle upto Kalutara. They fulfilled conditions required like (a) house was damaged due to tsunami, (b) house was built on own property and (c) it was built outside 2 km bufferzone which was announced by the government.
Arrangement put forward by WB was that they would give 25% of the funding required for the total beneficiary population and balance 75% of funding had to be provided by two state banks, Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. The beneficiaries had to submit their applications to the Divisional Secretariat and the Secretariat had to maintain a Damage Assessment File (DAT) for each beneficiary. The funds were provided in three or four instalments depending on level of damage and progress made.
Balance 75% of money paid by state banks would be reimbursed by WB only when a 100% Beneficiary Verification Audit (BVA) was carried out and only in respect of those who were found to be eligible. The 25% funds already received from WB for those ineligible beneficiaries will be deducted from the 75% of the balance funds identified for eligible beneficiaries. While the Divisional Secretariats maintained DAT files, two State Banks maintained all details about beneficiaries and payments made in their computer systems.
Beneficiary verification audit
It was early 2006 and TAFREN announced their need for the BVA and put a newspaper advertisement. WB had already spelt out conditions for the BVA as follows:
(i) Audit had to be carried out in all 22 divisional Secretariat areas concurrently and completed within 2 months.
(ii) Audit had to ensure that the identity of beneficiary was right, ownership was established, etc. using the DAT file
(iii) Audit had also to be carried out at the house to ensure that the damage was due to Tsunami, it was of the right type -partial or full damage – and person identification was matching.
The audit conditions were tough; but it did not deter us from looking at ways and means of carrying it out within the specific time period.
Having had experience in carrying out consultancy assignments to cover wide areas and mastered the art of doing audits we decided to quote for the assignment. The directors carved out different aspects of the assignment - Arjuna – Risk based consultancy person undertook to carryout a comprehensive Risk Assessment of the project, Dushantha – IT in-charge, worked out a detailed road map for use of IT services from converting Data Base to be received from two banks to the report template expected by TAFFREN, Theekshana prepared the manpower plan, Indrani – logistics, office equipment framework and I worked on the strategy to be adopted to collect information at the two locations – location of the House and Divisional Secretariat Office – without making it known as to who and who would get disqualified at the respective locations. Arjuna made full use of his experience in preparing 43 tobacco collection centers of Pakistan Tobacco Company along with Islamabad Head Office and two factories at Jhelum and Akorakhattak for SA 8000 certification in exactly three months, reasonably fresh in his mind and prepared a detailed Risk Treatment Plan. We were very confident that we could do it successfully in time allocated and we submitted the only quotation on closing date of the tender.
TAFREN decided to call for fresh quotations and the name of the organisation had already being changed from TAFREN to RADA (Reconstruction and Development Agency).
We again responded with our proposal and information we received was that an Australian consultancy firm had quoted to carry out the audit in series starting with Kalutara and moving along the coastline to Vadamarachchi, while a Sri Lankan audit firm had quoted to do a sample of 5% of population. So naturally we were awarded the assignment and real-time challenges started popping up.
Preliminary arrangements
While agreements were been prepared, bank guarantees arranged, transport arrangements were been made. I met Prof. S. Perera, at the University of Sri Jayawardhenapura and arranged to obtain about 40 graduands of the university to cover the Galle District. She agreed to arrange for graduands to be ready to go to Ambalangoda and stay there and carry out the audit. When I met her, there was one V. Subramaniam – another graduand – from Jaffna and he responded positively to my request for support in organizing the Vadamarachchi and Mullaitivu locations. He arranged for us to use Dr. K. Rajendran of Jaffna University to overlook audits in Vadamarachchi and Mullaitivu Divisional Secretariat areas. A nephew of mine arranged some young persons from Moratuwa to carryout the audit in Kalutara district and another relation arranged two retired school teachers and two young school leavers to handle the smaller Tissamaharama. The only area left out was Batticaloa and its surrounding areas. K. Pathmanathan former Governor of Rotary came to my rescue by suggesting that I contact M. Vinayagamurthy, former President of Rotary Club of Batticaloa. He agreed to be my co-ordinator in Batticaloa and agreed to provide required number of field staff and remained to be a tower of strength throughout. Prof. S.S. Colombage at the Open University introduced Dr. S.C. Chandrabose – a lecturer at the Open University – to help me in communicating with Batticaloa and Jaffna.
I had already prepared a key factor to success of the project – the questionnaire to be used for the purpose. It consisted of two parts of an A4 sheet – upper part to be used at Divisional Secretariat to verify the person, ownership, addresses and lower part to be used at location of the house to verify (a) level of damage and (b) that damage has been due to Tsunami. Two parts were used by two persons and these were brought separately to our office in Colombo to match and file. The two parts were filed one above the other in the same file and there was a separate file for each Grama Sevaka Division.
Then we prepared material for the training program. We had modules covering, General Introduction, Auditing Methodology, Legal Aspects related to land ownership, Structural Engineering aspects related to partial and full damage and Logistics, issue resolution methodology. The next step was to take the selected auditors for Kalutara, Galle and Tissamaharama districts and conduct the training program at Ambalangoda.
In the meantime we had received two CDs from Bank of Ceylon and Peoples Bank containing all the data corresponding to the beneficiaries; Dushshantha had developed a program to convert data in these two CDs to fill data slots assigned in the individual data collection sheets. Corresponding to each beneficiary there were two partially filled forms to be filled up at the Divisional Secretariat office and at the damaged house.
On a Sunday morning, we went to Ambalangoda with Prof. Mrs. Perera and Mahesh Fernando – my pupil at Trinity and then an experienced, qualified Structural Engineer to carry out the Training. Between us, we explained everything about the audit – overall methodology, how to verify land ownership, how to decide level of damage, logistics, how to collect forms to carryout the audit and handover completed forms to be dispatched to our office. In the late afternoon we carried out a mock audit and everything seemed fine.
But at the end of the third day, there resulted resentment on the arrangement and team from the university was not happy on a few issues. They had expected to carry out a survey where they would go to a damaged house and fill up a form completely with names, addresses, etc. and not to fill up blanks in a semi filled format. They said that with partially filled format, it is difficult to find the location and the beneficiary.
So, Prof. Mrs. Perera and I left for Ambalangoda and summoned the teams to where the girls stayed. We explained urgency of audit and the way it is planned is the best way and the quickest way and if we don’t finish it on time, the country would lose a significant amount of money. They understood our viewpoint and settled down and went ahead with the audit.
We got the training handouts translated by a translator at the Open University and we set about the training in Batticaloa. Dr. Chandrabose managed to get some undergraduates at the Eastern University through a friend of his called A.H. Mohamed and we went to Batticaloa and organized the set up. Dr. Chandrabose helped us by ensuring that the completed forms arrived in our office without any comparisons been done in respective locations.
We then diverted our attention to Jaffna area and sent necessary training material to Dr. Rajendran. He and Subaramaniam conducted one training program for Vadamarachchi in Jafffna and one for Mullaitivu in Kilinochchi and initiated audits.
Once we had finished our initial planning and first training at Ambalangoda we prepared the Inception Report which contained our team structure, map of our process flow and Data Collection Sheet and basic time frames. We were summoned for a meeting with E. Narayan – Team Lead from the World Bank and we explained our methodology and the Data Collection Sheet. He was very happy with the arrangements.
Processing of data sheets
Once the data sheets were received at our office, they were filed carefully in a separate file for each Grama Sevaka Division and two parts corresponding to a single beneficiary were filed with DS Division format above Householder Location form in the same sequence. We could readily identify any missing forms and initiate suitable action to get a new data sheet generated. Then these data were entered into a software generated. But final processing which would yield lists of eligible and rejected beneficiaries was not initiated till all data corresponding to a Grama Sevaka division was received.
We were summoned for another meeting with Narayana in mid October, 2006 and we went for the meeting. We also carried with us two files - reasonably thick corresponding to two GS Divisions in Galle and Batticaloa. Representatives from the audit firm which was carrying out the 5% Financial Audit were already there discussing with the World Bank team here, representatives from RADA and Narayan and they were engrossed in a discussion about the Audit. They were saying that they were unable to do the audit at Kaluwanchikudy as the beneficiaries were restless and not cooperating. This prompted Narayan to ask whether we had done Kaluwanchikudy and fortunately one of the files we had taken belonged to Kaluwanchikudy. So I presented the file and said it had all the completed forms corresponding to the DS Office and location of the house filed one below the other in the right order. Probably, the beneficiaries got to know that they might get disqualified for the receipt of the grant and they may not have been cooperating with the financial auditors. Anyhow they were very happy that we had all the relevant data and ready to select the beneficiaries for the majority of divisions in Galle, Kalutara, Batticaloa and Tissamaharama districts.
Based on the progress we have demonstrated, we got another three similar assignments – in Batticaloa in respect of KFW Bank funding, in Trincomalee in respect of ADB Funding and a smaller version of WB assignment of ICRC Funding and the total number of householders rose to about 74,000.
With about 75% of completed forms received at the office, we started processing and identifying the beneficiaries – both qualified and disqualified. The individual answers corresponding to different questions had already been entered into the system and results in respect of the DS Office part were not visible to those who were entering the other results.
These entered data were subjected to a quality check using a software and then the total set of results available were analysed using another software to yield the final Eligible Beneficiaries List. We always reminded ourselves that any mistake on our part could lead to a Divisional Secretary having to explain a shortcoming on his part and the country losing Rs. 250,000 in foreign exchange. We had to create these beneficiary lists separately for each Divisional Secretariat Area.
When we ran that software, 14% of the beneficiaries whose data sheets were completed disqualified and half of them were disqualified for the reason that the houses were built within the buffer zone. When this was brought to the notice of Narayan he suggested that we disregard that requirement and we eliminated it from our software. We believe this indicated that they – World Bank – had no intention of depriving us of the benefit of the grant.
While we were doing these, Narayan also carried out a sample audit with a small team and compared these results. Out of all these 74,000 beneficiary files subjected to the audit, they had come across only one file in that sample audit in need of an explanation from us. There was one beneficiary – a chairman of a local government body – who had submitted four applications and we had rejected three and approved only one and the question was that what he built did not look like a house. We responded by saying that the World Bank guidelines for the grant had not spelt out a specification of a house to be verified and it ended there.
We managed to complete the audit and Government of Sri Lanka obtained the grant money for about 93% of the original beneficiaries who benefitted and we feel very happy that the two public sector Banks – Bank of Ceylon and Peoples Bank recovered the money they had distributed which would have amounted to more than Rupees Ten Billion.
Consultancy
I always used to wonder what would have happened if we did not quote for that Beneficiary Verification Audit. It may be that the Australian consultancy would have got the job – WB having agreed to the arrangement--and they may have tried to do it in the sequential manner they had proposed. Then if what happened at Kaluwanchikudy was any indication, it may have come across a few stumbling blocks on the way. Would it have deprived us of the benefit of that much needed grant?
The success of our endeavour, I believe, depended on a few things:
(a) Presence of a dedicated team in Prof. (Mrs) Perera, Drs. Chandrabose and Rajendran, Messrs. Vinayagamurthy and Mohamed, Structural Engineer Mahesh Fernando and Lawyer Thushari and of course the four directors, Indrani, Arjuna, Dushshantha and Theekshana. Each one of them may have solved many a problem which I never came to know so that I could always concentrate on the Big Picture.
(b) Then there was this team of about 1250 persons from different parts of Sri Lanka who participated in the audit and each one of them carried out his or her task without creating unnecessary problems.
(c) Then that questionnaire sheet which beautifully served the purpose and kept key sensitive information adequately confidential throughout the process and the software which maintained that confidentiality even during data processing.
(d) The mode of operation of separating the audits at DS Office and Location of the house and keeping relevant information confidential throughout. Or was it luck bestowed upon me by the fact that I practiced very religiously the 480 ways of extending loving kindness to all living beings in all parts of Sri Lanka from the day of the Tsunami onwards which made all these four things happen simultaneously.
But the more important aspect is how we, people from different (a) parts of the country, (b) communities and (c) religious backgrounds co-operated and managed to save Rs. 10 billion in 2006 for Mother Sri Lanka.
The writer is the Managing Director of Somaratna Consultants (Pvt.) Ltd.
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