10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. Hector Appuhamy

Samagi Jana Balawegaya· Puttalam· 15 March 2025 ·Debate: Debate: Appropriation Bill 2025, Twenty-first Allotted Day - Committee Stage, Head 112 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism)

Law & OrderForeign Affairs
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Hon. Hector Appuhamy raised concerns about Sri Lankan driving licences being accepted abroad, noting that issues related to format and security features affect multiple countries beyond Italy and Poland, and urged that digitization meet international requirements. He also highlighted difficulties faced by Sri Lankans in Italy receiving special sojourn permissions for hardship or illness, requesting action to resolve Foreign Ministry certification and passport-related documentation bottlenecks that prevent them from working or moving freely.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Mr. Chairman, briefly: On driving licences, beyond Italy and Poland, multiple countries are affected by format and security features. Please ensure our digitization aligns with international requirements. Also, Italy is granting certain “sojourn” permissions to individuals (e.g., due to illness or hardship) allowing work without issuing a passport; however, required family documents need certification from our Foreign Ministry. Without passports being issued in such cases, beneficiaries become immobilized. Please treat this as a special case and resolve the documentation/passport bottleneck.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Saturday, 15 March 2025 ·No. 1745317151078324 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
Permalink
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Cite as: The Hon. Hector Appuhamy. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 15 March 2025. No. 1745317151078324. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/11559