Although, wooden sleepers have been used mainly for railway tracks from the inception of the Railway Service in Sri Lanka, the Government Timber Corporation has been unable to meet the high demand for wooden sleepers, due to the acute shortage of timber.

As such, the Railway Department has to opt to obtain more concrete sleepers in order to avert the dearth of wooden sleepers for maintaining the existing railway tracks and to meet the requirement of wooden sleepers for various projects in hand.

Accordingly, the proposal made by the Minister of Transport Services Management, to award the contract to the State Engineering Corporation, to supply 100,000 concrete sleepers at the rate of Rs.6,876.00 per sleeper inclusive of the management fees for the next period of 30 months, was approved by the Cabinet.