Hundreds of pricey government vehicles have been abandoned around Sri Lanka鈥檚 capital after the country鈥檚 new Marxist-leaning president took office, a member of his party said on Wednesday, with hundreds of others missing.
Senior members of the former government had dumped the state-owned cars and SUVs without a proper handover, according to Wasantha Samarasinghe, a member of Anura Kumara Dissanayake鈥檚 JVP party.
The fleet includes four-wheel-drive Toyota Land Cruisers and utility vehicles.
鈥榃e have launched an investigation into who abandoned these vehicles and on what authority they used them,鈥� Samarasinghe told reporters at a public park where the vehicles had been left.
He did not say whether the keys had been left with the cars.
Out of a fleet of 833 vehicles registered at the colonial-era Presidential Secretariat, there was no trace of 253, he added.
The vehicles are believed to have been taken by senior politicians and officials of previous administrations.
Dissanayake came to power following Saturday鈥檚 election, riding a promise to change the country鈥檚 political culture and tackle corruption and abuse of power.
Local election monitors reported the main malpractice recorded during the peaceful vote was the misuse of state-owned vehicles and other resources.
Cars are prohibitively expensive in Sri Lanka, which in March 2020 banned the import of vehicles amid a worsening foreign exchange shortage that ultimately saw supplies of food, fuel and medicine run out.
A 10-year-old Toyota SUV currently goes for around $1,50,000, while a five-year-old Range Rover exceeds $3,00,000.
Meanwhile, Lanka鈥檚 top immigration official was arrested on Wednesday for failing to heed a court order to reverse a contract that outsourced visa processing to an India-based consortium.
Harsha Ilukpitiya was ordered to be remanded until the Supreme Court completed its hearing into the allegations of corruption in awarding the contract in April.
That month the Sri Lankan government gave the multimillion-dollar contract to India鈥檚 GBS Technology Services and IVS Global FZCO, along with VFS Global as a technology partner, to process the visa applications of foreigners.
Under the outsourcing agreement, any foreigner entering Sri Lanka was required to pay $25 to have their application processed 鈥� even citizens of countries that had visa-free travel arrangements with Sri Lanka.
Opposition parties and then-tourism minister Harin Fernando had opposed privatising the process, arguing it would discourage tourists.
In August the Supreme Court issued an injunction that suspended the agreement and ordered the temporary reinstatement of the local telecom provider who had previously handled visa processing.
The petitioners alleged that the contract was not awarded transparently and told the court that the foreign consortium would earn up to $2.75 billion over a 16-year period.
Some 1.19 million tourists came to the island in the first seven months of this year, up 56 per cent from the corresponding period in 2023, according to Central Bank of Sri Lanka data.