Lanka Metro Transit has said claims circulating on social media that its metro buses can be reserved for private use are completely false, and asked the public to rely only on its official communication channels.
No facility has been provided so far to hire metro buses for private use or to reserve them in any manner, the company said in a statement, Hiru News reported. It asked the public not to be misled by inaccurate information about metro bus services.
The claim did not start on social media
Hiru’s account presents this as a correction of social media rumour. It is narrower than that.
The denial follows remarks by Sanjaya Dayaratne, described as a project manager attached to the metro bus initiative, who was interviewed by several state media outlets, Newswire reported. Dayaratne said there was a plan to let members of the public hire metro buses for private trips on Saturdays and Sundays once the service became fully operational.
He presented it as a way to make better use of the fleet at weekends, when passenger demand would be lower, and suggested reservations could eventually be made through a designated hotline.
On that account the company is not correcting a rumour but contradicting a named official who had set out the plan in some detail on state broadcasters. “Metro buses are not available for hire or reservation for private purposes,” the company said.
Why it matters
Lanka Metro Transit is a new state-backed operator and its service details are still being established in public, which makes the gap between what a project official says and what the company will confirm more than a presentational problem. Neither report says whether Dayaratne was describing an idea under internal consideration, a decision since reversed, or a position he was not authorised to give.
The company’s phrasing leaves room on the substance: it says no facility has been provided so far, which denies that private hire exists today without ruling out that it was ever discussed.
Not reported
Neither account says whether Dayaratne remains in his role or has been corrected internally, which state outlets carried the interviews, or when they were broadcast. Neither gives the company’s position on whether private hire is under consideration for the future, and neither names an official spokesperson for the statement.
This is also the second recent occasion on which figures attributed to the metro project have had to be clarified in public; LankaNewz has previously noted that outlets counting the metro fleet were counting different categories of vehicle rather than disagreeing on a single number.
Of the verified Sri Lankan newsrooms LankaNewz tracks, only Hiru News had filed its own account at the time of writing — the Daily Mirror’s latest-news listing carried nothing on it. Newswire is not a verified newsroom for credibility purposes and is cited here for the account of the project official’s remarks, which Hiru does not report.
