Households approved for Aswesuma but never paid have until 29 October to supply the documents that have held up their money, the Welfare Benefits Board has said.
The deadline applies to people who have not received Aswesuma benefits since 2023 because they lacked a National Identity Card or bank account details, NewsFirst reported on Sunday.
These are not rejected applicants. They cleared the eligibility test and were placed on the list, then could not be paid because the payment mechanism — a transfer into a dedicated Aswesuma bank account — requires identification the household did not have.
Why the deadline falls now
Board Chairman and Commissioner General Nimal Kotawalagedara said the census conducted to identify those eligible for benefits since 2023 is now in its final stage, and that the new list of beneficiaries will soon be displayed at divisional level.
That sequencing is the point of the cut-off. The Board wants households that were on the previous list but went unpaid for want of paperwork to receive their entitlement before the new list takes effect — after which the old list, and any unclaimed entitlement attached to it, is superseded.
Aswesuma is Sri Lanka’s main means-tested cash transfer. Its first phase covered 999,053 families in September, drawing Rs. 9.18 billion, with a further 213,335 families under the second phase. First-phase payments had earlier been suspended pending a nationwide verification survey intended to remove ineligible recipients.
Not reported
NewsFirst does not say how many households are affected, how far back the unpaid entitlement runs, or whether arrears will be paid in full. Nor does it state where or how documents are to be submitted — at the Divisional Secretariat welfare unit, through a Grama Niladhari, or online — or what happens to a household that misses 29 October.
The report gives no date for the new list’s display beyond “soon”, and does not say when it takes effect.
A note on searching this story
Aswesuma deadline notices recur and older ones rank highly: a November 2025 notice gave beneficiaries until 10 December to verify their information, and an October 2023 notice offered “another chance” to some 200,000 recipients. Neither is this story. The discriminator is the 29 October 2026 date paired with the specific blocker — missing NICs and bank details on the 2023 cohort.
LankaNewz found no other verified newsroom carrying this announcement at the time of publication.
