The Hon. Bimal Rathnayake - Minister of Transport, Highways, Ports and Civil Aviation and Leader of the House of Parliament

Jathika Jana balawegaya· National List· 18 June 2025 ·Oral question: Oral Questions: Questions 1–2 (School Projects, Ministers' Answers and Supplementaries) and Q.633/2025 (stood down), Q.636/2025 (Limestone Transport), Q.715/2025 (Kukuleganga Access Road), Q.724/2025 (Suwaseya Ambulance Service), Q.792/2025 (Bus Route Permits), Minuwangoda Shopping Complex, Tea Factories, and Social Media Provisions

Infrastructure

AI summary generated by gpt-5.5

Locomotives, coaches and other Sri Lanka Railways equipment have not been leased for limestone transport from Puttalam to the Aruwakadu quarry; instead, transport charges are collected under an agreement with the cement company now known as Siam City Cement Lanka Ltd. The Minister stated that the quarry rail track belongs to the company, locomotives are only hired when needed on a daily basis, and Sri Lanka Railways has earned no lease income from this transport arrangement.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 (a) (i) Locomotives, coaches and other equipment of Sri Lanka Railways have not been leased out for transporting limestone from Puttalam (Palaviya) to the Aruwakadu quarry. However, transport charges are levied based on the weight of limestone transported under an agreement between Sri Lanka Railways and Puttalam Cement Company Ltd. (PCCL). PCCL changed its name to Holcim Lanka Ltd. from 25.01.2002 and then to Siam City Cement Lanka Ltd. from 15.09.2016. Since the rail track to the limestone quarry belongs to that company, locomotives, coaches or other equipment have not been leased out for limestone transport. As needed, locomotives are occasionally hired from Sri Lanka Railways on a daily hire basis.

¶ 02 (ii) Does not arise.

¶ 03 (iii) No income has been earned by Sri Lanka Railways by leasing for limestone transport.

¶ 04 (iv) Does not arise.

¶ 05 (b) Not applicable.

Provenance

Source: Hansard, Wednesday, 18 June 2025 ·No. 1751280704002343 ·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/6745

View source PDF ↗ Suggest a correction

Cite as: The Hon. Bimal Rathnayake - Minister of Transport, Highways, Ports and Civil Aviation and Leader of the House of Parliament. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 18 June 2025. No. 1751280704002343. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/6745