Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2018-06-05

Procuring of 500 New Buses for the Sri Lanka Transport Board

- Although 7,257 buses are required according to the transportation time table of the Sri Lanka Transport Board, to fulfill the passenger requirements, only 6,000 buses have been operated in service due to the shortage of buses. 1,560 buses of the fleet of buses of the Sri Lanka Transport Board are more than 15 years old, and since they constantly succumb to technical failures, the Board has not been able to provide a dependable service to fulfill the passenger requirements. Annually about 500 buses have to be removed from the fleet due to expiry of the life span and accidents. Considering these issues, the proposal made by Hon. Nimal Siripala de Silva, the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, to procure 400 New Buses with 50-54 High Back Seaters to be deployed for passenger services in urban routes and 100 New Buses with 32-35 Seaters to be used for the passenger services in the rural routes, was approved by the Cabinet.