The Department of Motor Traffic was hit on two fronts in Parliament on Tuesday, with Transport Minister Bimal Rathnayake telling the House that decades of entrenched corruption had created the country’s driving licence crisis, and MPs separately voting to refer a Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) fraud report on the department to the Attorney General for legal action.
Addressing Parliament, Rathnayake said the DMT had long been plagued by fraud, irregularities and corrupt networks that had survived multiple administrations. “Former commissioners, deputy commissioners and several other officials have been arrested. Various forms of fraud and corruption are still being uncovered,” he said, adding that he felt sorry for the honest officers tarred by the institution’s reputation.
The minister said driving-licence-related contracts had been awarded to a single company for more than two decades, creating opportunities for corruption and inefficiency. The government, he said, transferred the contract through a tender process to a new company and cleared a backlog of about 450,000 pending licences.
But Rathnayake said he had recently discovered that of around 150,000 licences ready for dispatch last month, only about 33,000 were actually posted to applicants — pointing to continued obstruction inside the department. “There are still attempts to create the impression that nothing works once the corrupt elements are removed,” he said. He has instructed the Additional Secretary to investigate the officers responsible for the slowdown.
Separately, Parliament approved a motion to refer the COPA report on alleged financial irregularities and fraud in the DMT to the Attorney General. The report contains findings from COPA investigations carried out on 10 and 21 March 2025 and was originally tabled in Parliament on 25 July 2025 as Parliamentary Series No. 243. COPA reconsidered the report on 4 March 2026 after observations from the Finance Minister and the relevant subject minister, and unanimously decided to seek Parliament’s approval to escalate it to the Attorney General for any necessary legal action.
The twin moves come as the government continues to face pressure to convert its parliamentary majority into accountability outcomes, alongside the NEMIS rollout that has begun digitising teacher transfers in four provinces and the broader push to clean up legacy state institutions inherited from previous administrations.
