The Hon. Harshana Nanayakkara, Attorney-at-Law
The answer tabled provided overtime provision, expenditure and balances for the prison system from 2020 to 2025, showing expenditure rising from Rs. 785.1 million in 2020 to Rs. 1.91 billion in 2025. It attributed the increase to 24-hour operations across a nationwide prison network, severe overcrowding of about 40,000 inmates against capacity of about 11,000, staff shortages against the approved cadre, increased court-related duties, and higher overtime rates following salary increases. It stated that overtime should be properly managed and outlined measures including recruitment, virtual court appearances, expanded rehabilitation, expedited forensic reports, and greater use of community corrections to reduce congestion.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Mr. Speaker, I table the answer.
¶ 02 Answer tabled.
¶ 03 (a) Overtime expenditure (Vote 1002), 2020–31.12.2025:
¶ 04 - 2020: Provision Rs. 804,895,000.00; Expenditure Rs. 785,115,144.60; Balance Rs. 19,779,855.40 - 2021: Provision Rs. 900,000,000.00; Expenditure Rs. 806,246,052.82; Balance Rs. 93,753,947.18 - 2022: Provision Rs. 888,240,000.00; Expenditure Rs. 875,597,350.44; Balance Rs. 12,642,649.56 - 2023: Provision Rs. 1,015,000,000.00; Expenditure Rs. 982,351,308.34; Balance Rs. 32,648,691.66 - 2024: Provision Rs. 1,349,000,000.00; Expenditure Rs. 1,346,083,274.46; Balance Rs. 2,916,725.54 - 2025: Provision Rs. 1,940,000,000.00; Expenditure Rs. 1,912,486,606.19; Balance Rs. 27,513,393.81
¶ 05 (b) Factors for increase: - The prison system comprises 4 closed prisons, 18 remand prisons, 10 work camps, 2 open prisons, 2 correctional centres for youthful offenders, 1 training school for youthful offenders, 24 prison cadres’ quarters, and an officers’ training school under the Research and Training Centre — a nationwide institutional network. - As a national security-related institution, operations run 24/7 all year to ensure custody, security, and rehabilitation. - Although designed capacity is about 11,000 inmates, the current population is about 40,000, increasing additional duties (daily court productions, hospital clinics, inter-institution transfers). - Lower pay relative to other public services has led to resignations, migration, and retirements; increased court sittings nationwide require more officer deployments. Approved cadre: 7,867; current strength: about 5,378. The same tasks are performed with fewer officers, necessitating overtime. - Overtime hourly rates have risen due to public sector salary increases.
¶ 06 (c) Stance: Overtime payments should be properly managed.
¶ 07 (d) Measures: - Recruit to fill approved vacancies (recruitment ongoing). - Introduce virtual court appearances from within prisons to reduce movements. - Establish rehabilitation centres to reduce re-incarceration. - Expedite forensic reports and increase community corrections to reduce congestion.
¶ 08 (b) Not applicable.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Friday, 6 March 2026 ·No. 23376 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/5109
Cite as: The Hon. Harshana Nanayakkara, Attorney-at-Law. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 6 March 2026. No. 23376. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/5109