The Sri Lanka Customs has clarified that certain cut portions of vehicles that had been seized by the Customs Department for having been illegally imported were destroyed yesterday.
Issuing a statement, Sri Lanka Customs stated that its Customs Income Surveillance Unit had seized these illegally imported vehicles and vehicle parts on various occasions, which were declared as state assets.
An expert committee had been appointed to make recommendations as Sri Lanka Customs was running out of storage space due to the seized illegal vehicles.
The committee had recommended that the vehicle parts cannot be transferred to metal importers or the public and that the cut portions of the seized vehicles cannot be used to assemble new vehicles as it poses a risk of accidents.
Sri Lanka Customs stated that the vehicle cut portions were destroyed after all usable parts had been examined and removed.
The vehicle cut portions of the illegally imported vehicles had been destroyed based on the four key factors highlighted by the Sri Lanka Customs committee,
- Prevent road accidents due to the use of vehicle parts from illegally imported vehicles
- Additional government income by importing scrap metal from these illegally imported vehicles
- Extra storage space created for Sri Lanka Customs by discarding such vehicles
- A message to the public that such illegally imported vehicles will never be released by the Sri Lanka Customs (NewsWire)
