The Department of Motor Traffic (DMT) has admitted to the Parliamentary Committee on Public Finance (COPF) that the province identifier and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system once embedded in Sri Lankan vehicle number plates was scrapped because the Police never had the equipment to read it.
Officials appearing before COPF on Thursday said the province indicator had been introduced during the civil war to help police identify the origin of vehicles in transit. The number plates were rolled out together with an RFID tag. “As the Police did not possess the necessary equipment to read the RFID, we decided to remove the province indicator and RFID from vehicle number plates,” the officials told the committee.
They said the decision to drop the scheme was also influenced by the high fees vehicle owners paid for specified number plates. When asked whether police can currently identify the provincial origin of a vehicle from its plate, DMT officials acknowledged that they cannot.
“The Police Department has informed that the system is not required at present, due to no existing war situation. And we do not have any request in this regard,” officials added.
COPF Chair Harsha de Silva described the project as “a total waste of public finance,” noting the system had been introduced by the DMT at a time when the Police Department did not even possess the hardware to read RFID on number plates.
The disclosure comes a day after the same committee heard that the DMT is planning to introduce personalised number plates once its legacy IT systems are upgraded, in a separate sitting chaired by the SJB MP. COPF has been scrutinising DMT operations in recent weeks and has already flagged procedural gaps in how the department handles fleet and driver databases.
