For all Parents:
Following has just reached us from a few past senior Prefects. If true (we have no reservations) this sounds unethica, high handed and dirty work and absolute misuse of authority. We invite comments of both DP Clubs & Societies which we will run without editing. All we wish to say is this isn’t Drug Money but money earned by our children for the school. Instead of encouraging them to work harder the school management has killed their spirit! Please read:
So what happened was, usually at Royal every club had their own division in the school’s main bank account. (People's bank, thibirigasyaya) Whatever the profits they got were considered as the club’s money and they were able to use it over the course of years for their projects. But in 2024, during the time Mr. Bimalka left and Mr. Nelum came,(during this transition time) and I think this is as soon as Thilak sir came to the school as well, all these club budgets were zeroed in the beginning of the year.
The SDS staff was also changed during this time, it was new people who were looking over stuff. So usually in SDS there’s an excel file maintained which has the club budgets of each and every club, recorded. (Ex:- interact has 1million, Drama club has 2 million likewise). And when we inquired about this document, apparently this document had gone missing, and there was no way to even know accurately how much money was in their respective clubs by that time.
When we talked to Nelum and Thilak sir, they were talking about the circular which says club budgets have to be zeroed the end of the year. But also in the same circular there’s an exception(if I remember right) that if the clubs mention in their proposals that they’re going to use the surplus for a future project, the school can’t zero it. But the SDS had zeroed it without checking if the clubs have mentioned it or not, cuz when we showed them the previous year’s proposals which have mentioned the that clause, it was clear they haven’t even considered about that. Later there were discussions on returning the money back to clubs, which the school had zeroed, which never happened.
During this time, the SDS secretary (Nelum) was complaining about being unable to pay the school’s electricity bill and the school running at a loss, but there was no hint to what happened to the zeroed millions.(Accoring to our rough calculations there should’ve been at least 2 million or more in total)
There were a few other discrepancies in the club’s profits put to SDS in the previous year which were oddly mentioned in the annual report of school as well. I fail to remember them accurately. Please refer to the school’s annual reports of 2022,2023 & 2024 for further reference.
Also there was this policy brought up by Nelum to deduct 5% from all income (not profit. Income) clubs deposit in the SDS, to school welfare. But there was never a mention of for what welfare it was going to be allocated for. Nelum was talking about getting a sound system for navaragahala. But there was no proposed budget or plan for it. He was asking the prefects to make a plan, but when the prefects suggested to get it done with old boys’ donations and not to deduct clubs’ money for it, he didn’t agree to that either. I’m not sure if this deduction happened during that year. But it was quite obvious that the SDS was trying to play around with clubs’ money with no proper plan of putting them to good use or whatsoever.
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