No more provincial ID number plates: State minister

A new mechanism is to be introduced where the number plates will not have to be changed when transferring the ownership of the vehicle outside the province, State Minister for Transport, Dilum Amunugama said.

He said according to the new process, each vehicle would have only one number, even when the ownership was switched between provinces.

“Hence the new number plates will not indicate the letters mentioning the province such as SP, WP, or UP,” he said.

The state minister said a policy decision had been taken to stop the issuance of number plates when re-registering vehicles during changing the registration of ownership, or transfer of vehicles between provinces and that the ministry took into consideration the high cost borne by the people and the practical difficulties involved.

"The persons who get vehicles from other provinces have to pay for new number plates according to the province such as Western Province (WP) or Central Province (CP)," he said and added that to minimize the process involved, Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology would be introduced to automatically identify and track vehicles.

The RFID tags are embedded with a transmitter and a receiver. The RFID component on the tags has two parts -- a microchip that stores and processes information, and an antenna to receive and transmit signal. The tag contains the specific serial number for one specific vehicle.

The state minister said tag reading equipment would be given to Police stations and other relevant departments to identify the vehicle’s current owner and his details.

“We have stopped the issuance of new number plates after surrendering the old plates at the Motor Traffic Department. A new process was implemented to courier the new number plates and driving licenses through State Courier service,” he said.

According to the new procedure the new owner need not surrender the old number plate but on receiving a number plate, or a driving licence, he or she will have to dispose of the old number plate or the driving licence on their own,” he said. (Chaturanga Samarawickrama)