- No clarity on follow up of action
The Department of Motor Traffic (DMT) awaits relevant details from the District Secretariats, to begin blacklisting the vehicles that have not obtained revenue licences for five consecutive years and to remove them from the vehicle information system, The Daily Morning learnt.
When contacted by The Daily Morning on the progress and the action plan of the DMT to locate the revenue licences not renewed for five years, the Commissioner General of DMT Nishantha Anuruddha Weerasinghe said yesterday (21) that the DMT is waiting for the information of vehicles that fit the criteria which should be shared with them by the District Inspectors, to take further action in this regard.
He said a proper action plan on how to carry on the process will be decided once the DMT completes gathering relevant information such as the exact number of vehicles with non-renewed revenue licence and their owners.
“It was about two weeks ago that I came up with this idea of blacklisting the vehicles with non-renewed revenue licences for more than five years. After that we (DMT) deployed our district inspectors to detect vehicles that have not obtained revenue licences for more than five years and the Pradeshiya Sabha, Urban Councils and Municipal Councils have been notified to provide information in this regard. Once the information is received, the particular vehicle will be removed from the system. All we need is the necessary information to implement this. However it would take time to gather information as there are millions of vehicles without renewed revenue licence as per the estimation carried out by the DMT,” he said.
Weerasinghe added that the DMT is yet to decide whether they would take action against the owners apart from blacklisting the vehicles.
“Even though more than 8 million vehicles have currently been registered with the Department, only 6 million vehicles have been registered through the QR code system and this step will be taken to protect the people from vehicle dealers and those involved in vehicle smuggling by keeping open records of vehicle transfers,” he said.