Responding to the grievance expressed by the Postal Department that it had already suffered a significant revenue loss due to the introduction of the GovPay payment gateway for traffic fines, Lankapay CEO Channa De Silva said that there is no legal provision that traffic fine payments should be made through Post Offices.
“There is no such thing in law that traffic fines have to go through the Postal Department system,” said De Silva.
Besides he said collecting traffic fines is the task of the police. The Postal Department has a task assigned to it and it should be doing that.
“When there is an easy and convenient mode of payment why should somebody make an issue. Anyway the money will finally go to government coffers,” De Silva said.
“It is up to the Government, the Police and the Postal Department to decide,” De Silva said.
However, he said that the GovPay payment gateway will be expanded to other sectors for payments as well. Following the introduction of the GovPay payment gateway for traffic fines, the Postal Department took umbrage that the payment system deprived it of its revenue gained through traffic fines.
“We have already suffered a considerable loss of revenue due to the GovPay payment system,” said a senior official of the Postal Department.
According to the Postal Trade Unions Front the Postal Department will lose between Rs. 600 million and Rs. 800 million annually due to the shift from its new SMS notification system for the payment of traffic fines.
The grouse of the Postal Trade Union is that the digital payment for traffic fines was introduced when already the Postal Department had introduced a SMS notification system for traffic fine payments.
However, the SMS notification method, according to the trade union, was not implemented due to a lack of response from the Police Department.
