Former National Transport Commission Chairman Renuka Perera has been remanded until September 29 after being arrested by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption over the issue of 56 passenger service permits for buses operating on the Southern Expressway.
Perera was produced before the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court on Thursday following his arrest. CIABOC investigators told court that the permits had been issued outside the legally prescribed procedure and that the annual fees had not been collected in a single payment as required.
The allegations relate to provisions of the National Transport Commission Act No. 37 of 1991 and recommendations contained in a Cabinet decision dated September 19, 2014.
CIABOC says the alleged actions caused a financial loss to the State while providing an unlawful benefit to an outside party.
Perera has not been convicted in the case.
The breakdown of the 56 permits was also presented in court. Investigators said 30 had been allocated in connection with a committee, while the remaining 26 had been distributed at Perera’s discretion.
The NTC’s published procedure for issuing a new passenger service permit is considerably more involved than simply approving an application.
According to the Commission, passenger demand is first surveyed and the required buses are identified. A traffic proposal is prepared, timetables and fares are determined and the necessary approvals obtained. The NTC then calls tenders, applies its selection criteria and awards the service before checking the bus, collecting the relevant fees and issuing the permit.
That process is important to the current investigation because the allegation concerns the way the 56 permits were issued.
The Commission also says that when an existing permit is renewed, documents such as the fitness certificate, insurance and vehicle emission certificate are checked before the relevant fee is collected and the permit renewed.
The permit system has had a complicated history
The present investigation is not the first time the NTC’s permit arrangements have appeared in official audit records.
The Commission’s 2018 annual report recorded an issue involving expressway route permits that were being issued under daily-fee arrangements. The report listed 7,740 expressway route permits and 130 permits for general roads under that arrangement.
The NTC explained that temporary permits were being used when passenger demand was high or where vacancies existed in timetables.
The audit observation concerned the fact that Section 25 of the NTC Act provided for road service permits for periods longer than one year.
That earlier issue should not be confused with the 56 permits now being investigated. It does, however, show that the Commission had previously faced questions over the administration of passenger permits and the way temporary services were handled.
There were also changes to the way Southern Expressway operators were selected.
Cabinet decisions in 2016 and 2017 dealt with the criteria and procedures for issuing passenger transport permits on the expressway, including the use of tenders.
The NTC’s later records continued to refer to operators who had been running services on the Southern Expressway under temporary permits.
In its 2022 annual report, the Commission said some operators had been operating with temporary passenger service permits since 2015 and that action was being taken to obtain approval to issue permanent permits after related court cases were settled.
The current case is narrower.
Investigators have identified 56 permits and allege that the procedure used to issue them did not comply with the applicable requirements.
The next part of the investigation will therefore be in the records behind those permits: the applications, approvals, committee documents and payments.
The amount that should have been collected, the amount that was actually collected and the people involved in processing the permits will also be relevant to establishing the financial allegation made by CIABOC.
Those details have not all been made public.
Perera is due to remain in remand until September 29, when the case is expected to return before court.
Official records
National Transport Commission — Bus Operators’ Guide
National Transport Commission — Annual Report 2018
