The Department of Motor Traffic restarted printing of vehicle number plates at 10:00am on Monday at its Werahera premises, ending a more than year-long suspension that disrupted new vehicle registrations across the country, NewsFirst reported.
Minister of Transport and Highways Bimal Rathnayake presided over the restart ceremony at the Werahera printing facility, the broadcaster said. The DMT had earlier confirmed the resumption would happen on the morning of 8 June.
Number plate printing was suspended in May 2025 over disputes related to the tender process that selected the previous contractor. The relevant new agreement was signed in March this year, after the procurement was rerun and South Asian Technologies (Pvt) Ltd was awarded a five-year contract to print and supply plates under technical evaluations completed earlier this year.
The earlier May 19 DMT statement projected a restart by 10 June at the upper edge of the contractual three-month window from the March 10 agreement date. The actual restart on June 8 brings printing back online two days inside that window and at the formal Werahera site.
A backlog of around 400,000 number plates is reported to have accumulated during the suspension, leaving thousands of newly registered vehicles operating without permanent plates. The DMT has previously asked vehicle owners with unclaimed plates to collect them by 30 June or face deletion from the queue, and police have moved to clarify rules around the temporary paper plates used in the interim.
The Werahera facility — the DMT’s long-standing printing site — has retained the institutional capacity for plate production. The new contract is intended to restore continuous output and clear the backlog over the coming weeks.
Source: NewsFirst — Vehicle number plate printing restarts today (08) - DMT.
