The government plans to recruit an additional 10,000 officers to the Sri Lanka Police in the coming year and to clear a backlog of promotions that has built up over five years, Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala said, Hiru News reported on Monday.
Wijepala said the government, under the President’s leadership, is working to build a more professional police service and raise the standards of its officers.
Promotions and transfers
The promotions withheld over the past five years will be granted within this year, the minister said, decided on seniority, performance, efficiency tests and examinations. Once that backlog is cleared, a systematic promotion scheme is to follow, so that officers receive promotions within an appropriate timeframe each year rather than in irregular batches.
A formal transfer system is also being developed, which Wijepala said would allow officers to obtain postings closer to their homes. Both measures address long-standing grievances within the force, where promotion and transfer decisions have been a recurring source of complaint.
Training, pay and equipment
Nearly 1,000 officers have received overseas training in the past two years, according to the minister, and a new system is being developed to open such training to officers at every level, junior to senior, without regard to rank.
Cabinet has approved a special risk allowance for police officers, to be introduced through the 2027 Budget in recognition of the risks of police duty. Wijepala also said preparations are under way for a redesigned police uniform, and that officers are to be provided with electric motorcycles alongside other infrastructure improvements.
How much of this is new
Several items are restatements of decisions already taken rather than fresh announcements, and the report does not distinguish between them.
| Measure | Earlier stage on the record |
|---|---|
| Electric motorcycles | Cabinet approved 400 electric cars and motorcycles for the force in April, with duty-free electric motorbikes for constables to inspectors through loans |
| Redesigned uniform | Uniform modernisation was among the items reviewed when the President ordered faster police modernisation in August |
| Recruitment | In August the ministry put the intake at 7,800 recruits to fill vacancies |
The recruitment figure is the one to watch: 10,000 in the coming year is a larger number than the 7,800 cited seven weeks ago, and neither Hiru nor the ministry explains whether this is an increase, a different counting basis, or a separate intake. Sri Lanka also operates a parallel scheme absorbing personnel from the Civil Security Department into the police, and no account says whether the 10,000 includes any of them.
The genuinely new elements appear to be the formal transfer system, the annual promotion scheme, and the commitment to clear the promotion backlog within this calendar year.
Not reported
Hiru gives no date or venue for the minister’s remarks and does not say what occasion prompted them. No cost is attached to the recruitment drive, the risk allowance or the uniform redesign, and no value is given for the allowance. The report does not say how many promotions are outstanding, how far the transfer system has been developed, or when either scheme is expected to take effect.
This report rests on a single verified newsroom. Daily Mirror and NewsFirst had not carried the remarks at the time of writing, and searches of The Island, The Morning, EconomyNext, Daily FT, Daily News, Colombo Gazette and Newswire returned only earlier rounds of police-reform coverage. Ada Derana appears to have reported the uniform element, but its site returned an access error on both routes we tried and we could not read it.
