The Hon. Bimal Rathnayake
Bimal Rathnayake tabled a written answer stating that Kalawewa Railway Station is an old station used by many local and foreign tourists. He said seat reservation facilities could be provided there in due course through the Railway Department’s ongoing online ticketing and reservation system expansion, currently operating with Mobitel at 50 stations. He added that ATMs can be installed at the station if a bank requests space and obtains the required approvals, after which the Railway Department can facilitate it without disrupting operations.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, I table the answer.
¶ 02 Answer tabled:
¶ 03 (a) (i) The Kalawewa Railway Station is one of the oldest railway stations in Sri Lanka. (ii) A large number of local and foreign tourists use the Kalawewa Railway Station. (iii) Yes.
¶ 04 (b) (i) Seat reservation facilities can be provided to the Kalawewa Railway Station in due course. (ii) At present, in collaboration with Mobitel, online seat reservation facilities have been provided at 50 stations. Accordingly, passengers can reserve seats either at the relevant station or online. The Railway Department is also introducing a new ticketing system covering all ordinary and season tickets. Under that system, online seat reservation can be extended to Kalawewa Station. (iii) Installation of ATMs at stations is done upon requests from relevant banks. The Railway Department will allocate suitable space without hindering operations, with recommendations from relevant sub-departments. Prior to applying, the bank must obtain necessary approvals, such as from the Central Bank and the area Police Station. The responsibility for obtaining such approvals lies with the bank. If any bank submits a request for Kalawewa, action can be taken accordingly.
¶ 05 (c) Not applicable.
Provenance
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- Hansard, Monday, 10 November 2025 ·No. 22753 ·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.
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Cite as: The Hon. Bimal Rathnayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 10 November 2025. No. 22753. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/20456