When tractors become cars!

Monday 24th March, 2025Anything is possible in Sri Lanka. In the popular sci-fi movie, Transformers, we have alien robots disguising themselves as cars, etc. That is Hollywood fantasy, but in this land like no other, there has been a real-world instance where tractors became cars, as it were!Sri Lanka, blessed with fecund land, is described as a country where seeds thrown anywhere sprout and mature in record time.

Sadly, it has also become a fertile ground for corruption, which has eaten into its vitals. Politicians are usually blamed for this sorry state of affairs. They no doubt deserve all the flak they are receiving, but others, especially the critics of the political authority, public officials, and business leaders, are no better.

A mega racket involving vehicle imports has come to light. The COPA (Committee on Public Accounts) and the Auditor General’s Department have blown the lid off a racket, where some unscrupulous elements imported luxury vehicles by declaring them as tractors. They have disclosed several instances where hundreds of vehicles were imported fraudulently, and the Customs documents were falsified to cover up those rackets at the expense of the state coffers.

Those revelations were made when the bigwigs of the Department of Motor Traffic (DMT) were summoned before the COPA the other day. The falsification of vehicle registration documents by some corrupt officials in the DMT has also caused huge losses to the state. The COPA members and the Auditor Ge.