Sri Lanka Language Allowance and Proficiency Checker

Four Public Administration circulars decide this question, and no single one of them answers it on its own. Circular 18/2020 of 16 October 2020 is the governing instrument: it sets the categories, the course hours, the three-year periods, the consequence of missing them and the whole NLQ incentive schedule. 18/2020(I) and 18/2020(II) move the concession date. Circular Letter 01/2026 operates the oral test that 18/2020(II) introduced. This page applies all four to one officer at a time.

Your category and course. Paragraph 2.1 keys the requirement on the service level of PA 03/2016, restated against PA 10/2025 in Circular Letter 01/2026 paragraph 5.5. Primary is category 3 and a 100-hour course, Secondary is category 2 and 150 hours, Tertiary and Senior is category 1 and 200 hours. Every course has written and oral parts with continuous assessment (2.2), and paragraph 2.3 requires at least 80% attendance before the requirement counts as satisfied. Courses are run by the Department of Official Languages and the National Language Education and Training Institute (4.1), and paragraph 3.6 obliges your head of institution to approve leave to attend, prioritised by whose date falls due first.

Your deadline, and why there are two of them. Two formulas run in parallel:

• statutory = 16 October 2020 + 3 years, for an officer appointed on or before that date (3.1)
• statutory = appointment + 3 years, for an officer appointed after it (3.2)
• concession = 16 October 2026 (18/2020(II) paragraph 02)
• operative = the later of the two

That last line is a stated reading, not a formula printed in any circular, and the tool says so on the result. 18/2020(II) extends the concession "for all the officers, who have to fulfill the requirement" until 16 October 2026; it cannot shorten a paragraph 3.2 period that has not yet run out, so an officer appointed in September 2025 keeps September 2028. Both dates are always rendered, the operative one is labelled, and the reasoning is printed underneath, so a reader who takes the extension differently can see the other date.

The increment. Paragraph 3.2 suspends the salary increment that would fall due at the end of the prescribed period, and keeps it suspended until the qualification is satisfied. The last day of the period is still inside it, so the tool reports suspension from the day after the operative date, not on it. The sentence that closes 3.2 matters too: no language course completed before joining the public service counts towards the paragraph 2.1 requirement.

The routes. Four releases exist alongside the course. Paragraph 2.5, inserted by 18/2020(II), accepts a pass in Second Language Sinhala or Tamil at G.C.E. (O/L) together with the Department of Official Languages oral test at the matching level. Paragraph 3.4 treats an officer who satisfied PA 01/2014 before 16 October 2020 as having completed the prescribed level. Paragraph 8.1 gives an officer who passed only the 01/2014 written test one opportunity at the oral test. Paragraph 3.3(a) exempts an English-medium entrant from the mother-language requirement on an O/L Sinhala or Tamil Language and Literature pass, while 3.3(b) keeps the other official language requirement on them in full. Paragraph 6.2 is a petition to the Monitoring Committee on an earlier qualification, which is a decision rather than a rule, so it is reported and never scored.

The oral test. Circular Letter 01/2026 paragraph 4.2 splits it into a listening assessment and a speaking assessment, with at least 40% required in each part separately, and only candidates who pass listening sit speaking. Applications go through languagesdept.gov.lk on any day of the year, with no gazette notification (5.1). The fee goes to account 7041541 of the Commissioner General of Official Languages at Bank of Ceylon, Rajagiriya, and it is not refunded in any circumstance (5.6, 5.7). Listening is held only at the Department of Official Languages, 341/7 Kotte Road, Rajagiriya (6.2), and the examination runs at least 2 times a year with 1month's notice (6.1).

The NLQ allowance. Paragraph 5.1.2 pays once and for all on marks: Rs 25,000 for 80 to 100, Rs 20,000 for 65 to 79, Rs 15,000 for 50 to 64, nothing below 50. Improve on an earlier sitting and you are paid the difference, which the tool computes as max(0, min(band, 25,000) − already received). The floor at zero is what implements the circular's closing sentence: a lower later score does not claw back what was already paid. A non-pensionable additional increment comes with the allowance, and keeping it running needs more than 50 marks at a sitting once every 5 years.

Who this does not cover. Circular 18/2020 is addressed to the public service and the provincial public service. University, judicial, armed-forces and corporation staff sit outside it. The rupee rates of the English link-language allowance under PA 29/98 are not encoded here either, because that circular is published only as a scanned image with no text layer, so its figures cannot be read reliably. The circular is linked below so you can read it yourself.

Every figure on this page is reconciled before it renders, and the reconciliation is shown rather than asserted. 17 of 17 checks pass, which is what the badge on the tool reports.

The strongest of them is free evidence the Ministry supplied itself. Paragraph 3.1 gives officers appointed before 16 October 2020three years from the effective date, and Circular 18/2020(I) then describes the period it is extending as "the concessionary period granted up to 16.10.2023". If this page's date arithmetic did not reproduce that date exactly, the arithmetic would be wrong. The second check compares the category table of 18/2020 paragraph 2.1 against the level-to-fee table of Circular Letter 01/2026 paragraph 5.5: two publications six years apart, which must pair the same service level with the same category. The rest walk the NLQ bands at every published boundary and replay the three worked examples above end to end.

Circular 18/2020 paragraph 2.1 and Circular Letter 01/2026 paragraph 5.5, side by side.

The NLQ incentive allowance, Circular 18/2020 paragraph 5.1.2.

Career maximum Rs 25,000. A non-pensionable additional increment comes with the allowance and needs more than 50 marks at a sitting once every 5 years to continue.

Three dates, each set by its own circular. The first is not a date anyone decided, it is paragraph 3.1 counting 3 years from the effective date, and 18/2020(I) confirms it by naming it as the period being extended.

1. 16 October 2023

   Three years from the effective date of 16.10.2020.

   Public Administration Circular 18/2020, paragraph 3.1

2. 16 October 2024

   Cabinet decision of 03.10.2022 extended the period granted up to 16.10.2023.

   Public Administration Circular 18/2020(I), paragraph 02

3. 16 October 2026In force

   Cabinet decision of 21.04.2025 extended the period granted up to 16.10.2024.

   Public Administration Circular 18/2020(II), paragraph 02

Officers appointed before 1 July 2007 are named by neither paragraph 3.1 nor 3.2, so the checker asserts no date for them and says to ask the Establishments Division which circular the appointment letter cites. Paragraph 07 of 18/2020 is separate from all of this: an officer who has already satisfied the requirement may still follow a refresher course every 5 years, with up to 1 day of duty leave a week.

Language allowance

භාෂා දීමනාව

Official language proficiency

රාජ්‍ය භාෂා ප්‍රවීණතාව

Oral test

වාචික පරීක්ෂණය

Listening skills

ශ්‍රවණ කුසලතා

Speaking skills

කථන කුසලතා

Salary increment

වැටුප් වර්ධකය

• Public Administration Circular 18/2020 (16 October 2020): Implementation of Official Language Policy
• Public Administration Circular 18/2020(I) (28 October 2022): Implementation of Official Language Policy (first extension)
• Public Administration Circular 18/2020(II) (26 May 2025): Implementation of Official Language Policy (second extension, adds paragraph 2.5)
• Public Administration Circular Letter 01/2026 (8 April 2026): Oral competency test in the other official language
• Public Administration Circular Letter 01/2017 (8 March 2017): Payment of incentive allowances to public officers proficient in more than one language
• Combined Services Circular 01/2025 (20 March 2025): Revision of the letter of appointment in respect of acquiring proficiency in the official language
• Public Administration Circular 29/98 (30 December 1998): English link-language incentive allowance. Scanned image with no text layer, so the rupee rates cannot be read deterministically.
• Public Administration Circular 29/98(I) (23 June 2004): English link-language incentive allowance. Amends paragraph 02.3 of 29/98 with effect from 1 January 2003.
• Department of Official Languages: the only channel for the oral test, and the publisher of its results
• Ministry of Public Administration: the full circular index

Every figure on this page was read from the circular PDFs above on 16 October 2026, which is also the day the concession date in force falls due. The page is re-checked by 16 November 2026, because a fourth extension is the likeliest change to it. This is not legal or official advice: confirm your own date with your Establishments Division before acting on it.

The increment this page can tell you is suspended has a rupee value: work it out with the salary increment calculator. For the scale your increment sits on, use the public service salary scale finder, and for the leave paragraph 3.6 obliges your head of institution to approve, the government employee leave calculator.