Nearly a Million Plates Backlog, Probe Ordered — Still Driving on a Paper Slip?

The DMT's own numbers are a mess right now — some reports say 650,000 number plates are pending, others put it closer to 950,000, plus well over half a million driving licences stuck waiting on printing. Capacity was only around 4,600 licences a day before new machines were promised, and Parliament's own oversight committee has now ordered a probe into why it got this bad. One side says this is a basic planning failure: the plate supplier contract lapsed years ago and nobody scaled up printing before reopening imports, so buyers are stuck driving on interim slips for months through no fault of their own. The other side says panic is overdone — the slip is legal, police aren't pulling people over for it, and the backlog is a capacity problem that's actually being fixed now with new machines coming online. If you're in that queue, how long have you actually waited, and has the missing plate ever cost you at a checkpoint, with insurance, or when trying to sell? ඔබේ වාහනයට තාම නොම්බර් ප්ලේට් එක ලැබිලා නැද්ද? කොච්චර කාලයක් ඉදලද ඉන්නේ?