Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2017-09-26

Short term solutions for the unprotected railway level crossings

- The policy of the Government is to provide systematic protection at every railway level crossing. Presently, action is being taken by the Government to install a Bell and Light protection system at unprotected railway level crossings and until then such activities are completed, it will be necessary to have Railway Barrier Operators to avoid accidents that may occur at such level crossings.

Presently, there are 687 railway level crossings throughout the country manned by the barrier operators employed with the intervention of the Sri Lanka Police. For each such crossing, three (03) barrier operators are employed and each person so employed is paid a monthly allowance of Rs.7,500/-. However, in the recent past, a considerable number of barrier operators have left the service due to the inadequacy of the allowance paid to them.

Therefore, as a remedial measure, the proposal made by Hon. Nimal Siripala de Silva, the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, to hand over the responsibility of handling the barriers throughout the day to be given over specifically to a single Member of the Samurdhi beneficiary family selected for the purpose for the payment of Rs.22,500/- for each barrier to the said Samurdhi beneficiary Family assigned with the task, was approved by the Cabinet.