The Hon. Chathura Galappaththi

¶ 01 Hon. Presiding Member, thank you for the opportunity to speak on several ministries’ expenditure heads. Though there is much to say, within the time I will focus on one matter: the Department of Railways under the Transport Ministry.

¶ 02 After I entered university, I commuted Matara–Colombo and back by train. Based on that experience, and the daily experiences of hundreds of thousands of train users, I present this proposal.

¶ 03 About 10 years ago, a youth group created a mobile app—RDMNS.LK—under a registered non-profit, “RDMNS Railway Network,” to help passengers manage time and get timetable information. The app has 600,000–700,000 downloads and about 1 million daily visits. Even Sri Lanka Railways staff use it to confirm train arrival times. Tourists use it as well.

¶ 04 Sri Lanka Telecom provides this non-profit with free hosting for large data, free survey tools, and unlimited capacity. Ideally Government should have introduced such an app, but did not. Moreover, there is no reliable official source today for live train schedules. Often the Sri Lanka Railways website is down.

¶ 05 A key point: at first glance you may think the app works by GPS, but actually it functions through crowdsourced inputs by a registered volunteer passenger network of over 1,000 who submit real-time data while traveling. Instead of listening to music or watching shows, these youths sacrifice their time to serve fellow passengers. A task the state should do is being done by a youth group.

¶ 06 Their modest request: to deliver this service effectively and help passengers manage time, they need official notifications of timetable changes, special trains added, and cancellations—i.e., the STN document—which is currently sent via WhatsApp internally. They ask that the admin team also receive it. This is not a big ask. Previous ministers engaged them and clarified matters. The Legal Department even executed an agreement on 2024.06.09. Yet nothing has been implemented since. The main obstacle is unions and the ticket mafia. We can even present evidence—recorded phone conversations—of union-linked persons opposing this, saying, “If you do this yourselves, we will opt out.” After this Government took office, the State Minister met the team and immediately instructed the General Manager to implement. Still nothing happened. Because this app will expose malpractice, some treat these youth as enemies and block them. The State Minister for Digital Economy also met and had them present again; all benefits to Railways were confirmed in writing, but still no action—one year on.

¶ 07 Further, through an RTI application by “Dayata Saviya,” information was requested from Sri Lanka Railways on steps taken. The reply stated there is no such agreement. We have the agreement in hand. This raises serious concerns about the public service.