Minister Prasanna Ranatunga, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, has initiated an investigation into the unauthorized lending of housing loans within his Ministry between the years 2015 and 2019.
According to an official statement from the Ministry, the majority of unauthorized lending took place in the Hambantota District.
The statement further revealed that funds designated for specific housing schemes under the Udagama project were diverted to various other housing schemes without proper authorization.
In addition to this, the Ministry has announced its intention to resume the construction of 98,000 houses, which had been halted midway. It has been discovered that work on 2,150 Udgamas was discontinued during the previous regime in 2015.
Furthermore, while work on 2,795 houses has been successfully completed since the SLPP government assumed power, the construction of the remaining houses could not be finished due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
