8 March 2017 08:58 am
At a special event held at the Police Headquarters in Colombo, Police Chief Pujith Jayasundara launched the new web based service for obtaining clearance certificates online.
The special project incorporated with ICTA (Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka) was introduced targeting both the citizens residing in locally and overseas, who require police clearance certificates for various purposes including for jobs.
The Inspector General flanked by many top ranking officials yesterday boasted how they succeeded in bring the concept of this service drafted in 2013 to a realty giving a remedial measure for the time consuming hassle of obtaining a clearance certificate.
The previous manual process of issuing a clearance certificate required an applicant to appear in person to the Police Headquarters (if the person is locally residing) and fill an application form with personal details and submit it with the required fee.
If someone from overseas is applying, he or she has to submit an appropriately filled application form to the Sri Lankan mission in the respective country of stay with the correct fee as well as certain additional bank charges for remitting the money.
This old method took at least 14 to 21 days to process as it involved lot of paper based applications and documents which had to be cross checked with many agencies with the Department like the CID and the TID.
But with the new e-service anybody who has access to the internet can apply for a clearance certificate even using a smart phone in no time and complete the submission by paying the fee with a credit or debit card as wells as through ‘eZ Cash’ method. It will take only four to five days, the Police Chief assured.
Representing the ICTA, its official Kanchana Thudugala said it took close to an year to complete the project and that they had linked all the 477 Police Stations countrywide to enable this service to transfer data.
A private software company PWC had assisted in designing the new online clearance certificate.
Application for the online clearance certificate could be accessed through the two URLs www.police.lk and www.gov.lk.(By Kurulu Koojana Kariyakarawana and Darshana Sanjeewa)