Sri Lanka Police has opened a temporary email-based route for Police Clearance Certificate applications, reversing its earlier instruction to the public to stop applying while the division’s computerised database remains down.

The system has been inactive since noon on Thursday, August 20, according to Police Headquarters. The Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) has been notified and work to restore the system is under way.

The temporary procedure

Applicants can download the form from the official police website, www.police.lk, under “Download Application,” and email the completed form together with photocopies of their National Identity Card and passport to [email protected].

No payment is required at the point of submission. Once the computerised system is restored, everyone who applied by email must resubmit through the online system and pay the normal fee, police said.

The Clearance Division will meanwhile begin obtaining the background reports each application requires from the relevant police stations, so that certificates can be issued once the system returns.

For applications already in the pipeline when the system failed, police will publish the reference numbers of completed certificates on the police website. Applicants whose numbers appear can collect their certificates in person from the 17th floor of the Suhurupaya Building in Battaramulla — and Daily Mirror reported that, as a special arrangement, collection will also be available on Saturdays and Sundays. Those whose reference numbers are not published will receive their reports after the system is fully restored.

The Police Media Division asked media organisations to circulate the announcement.

What broke

The Clearance Division uses a single automated database system to process applications, call in the reports needed to verify them, and print the certificates themselves — so the failure halted the whole chain rather than one step in it. That is why police initially asked the public to stop submitting applications altogether on Friday morning, before announcing the email workaround later the same day.

No estimate for restoration has been given. Police describe the fault as an unexpected technical failure and say steps are being taken to restore the system as soon as possible, with the public to be informed once it is operational.

Update, August 22: Police announced on Saturday evening that the system has been restored and applications can again be submitted through the usual online procedure. Applicants who used the email route must resubmit online and make the relevant payments as usual.

Why it matters

Police Clearance Certificates are among the more heavily used documents Sri Lanka Police issues to the public. They are routinely required for visa applications, migration, and overseas employment placements — the last a significant volume, with the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment reporting record monthly departures in July.

Several destination countries require a clearance certificate as a condition of entry or of a work permit. The United Arab Emirates made police clearance mandatory for Sri Lankan visa applicants, and applicants working to fixed visa deadlines have limited room to absorb a processing pause.

It is the second failure of a public-facing government document system in as many weeks. Passport issuance at the Department of Immigration and Emigration was halted by a computer system failure on August 11, though that outage was resolved within about an hour. The police system has now been down for more than a day.

Sources