By: Staff Writer
June 10, Colombo (LNW): The Sri Lanka Motor Traffic Department’s (MTD) aged old system for vehicle new registration and transfer is experiencing frequent breakdowns, primarily due to excessive workload and data entry errors. This is impacting the efficiency of the department’s operations and causing delays for citizens.
The system has crashed again last week and brought the total operations to a standstill for more than 24 hours recently, several buyers of news vehicles complained.
Newly appointed Commissioner General of MTD Kamal Amarasinghe said that the present system control has been struggling to handle the large volume of registration and transfer requests it receives, leading to system instability and crashes for several hours last week.
This was rectified within a short period and it is now operating normally he said adding that incorrect or incomplete information entered into the system can also cause errors and delays in processing requests.
These issues are causing delays in obtaining registration certificates, transferring ownership, and other essential services like issuance of number plates.
Such matters are unavoidable unless a most modern digital system is in place at the MTD, he said adding that the finance ministry is taking measures to introduce an integrated digitisation system connecting all relevant state revenue collection authorities
Until such time all previous e- motoring initiatives including a fully automated system for vehicle registration to integrate with other related systems, such as those for driving licenses and insurance, to create a more seamless user experience will be on hold or cancelled he said.
According to informed sources, the present Motor Vehicle Registration solution is very old system implemented in 1996 by a leading software private company Informatics in Sri Lanka. The Present System provider declined to extend the service agreement since 1st January 2025 due to various reasons effecting them. They have maintained system since inception.
Since 1st January 2025 system is manned by DMT staff and some of IT staff members working in MTD Vehicle Registrations, there are some officials work in this area have been interdicted, remanded and are under investigation by Bribery Commission for corruption and malpractices. Local news reports Last week another Deputy Commissioner was caught with few staff members related to transfer of vehicles by bribery commission.
Transport Ministry has called for a New Tender in 2016 to implement a new motor vehicle registration system based on the Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) proposals presented by ICTA appointed consultant in 2009 to implement a totally new solution to curb corruption, increase efficiency, and serve the public more conveniently
Accordingly the contract was awarded to the selected suitable bidder from the tender and contracts were signed with a Sri Lanka in 2018.
The implementation of this contract is pending as some corrupt officials in MTD prevented it from taking off the ground, due to their income sources drying up, informed sources alleged.
The proposed new system is supposed to be a beginning to end solution which covers Vehicle Imports before the order is placed with overseas exporters where DMT will issue an import permit for importation of the particular vehicle, this will streamline collection of government revenue from vehicle imports, since no one can change the identities of the vehicle.
At this time Ministry of Transport & MTD initiated few digitization projects which are not implemented thou the contracts are awarded & signed, the New Vehicles are coming to the country and public have to paste a number printed paper as license plate after paying huge amounts to purchase the vehicle and registration of the vehicle.
Hope the government will pay attention to resolve all these issues at MTD timely, here public interaction is much higher than other government departments, also Government income wise MTD is in the first five govt institutes.
