An abandoned vehicle is pictured in a parking lot January 24, 2018. — Picture by Ahmad Zamzahuri

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 11 — The Dewan Rakyat today passed the Road Transport (Amendment) Bill 2018 to improve the cancellation process of vehicle registration and to facilitate local authorities to dispose of abandoned vehicles in their respective areas.

Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Kamaruddin Jaffar said based on available record, there are 27.4 million registered vehicles in the country with 9.7 million of them believed to be no longer active as their road tax have not been renewed.

The total covers all types of land vehicles including cars, motorcycles, lorries, buses and so on, he said when winding up debate on the bill at Dewan Rakyat today.

Yesterday, Transport Minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook was reported as saying that local authorities have been having difficulties to dispose of abandoned vehicles in their areas as most of the vehicles still have valid registration.

Commenting further, Kamaruddin said the ministry would be cooperating with the Housing and Local Government Ministry as well as local authorities to streamline the standard operating procedure (SOP) used currently to dispose vehicles.

“The ministry will be reviewing the time taken to process damaged vehicles to expedite the disposal of the vehicles so as not to pollute the environment and the disposal is only carried out at registered disposal centres as well as compliance to disposal process to protect the environment,” he said.

Earlier, when tabling the bill for second reading., Kamaruddin said the amendment among others also proposed to empower the City Council to establish its own warden's team.

Apart from that, it also empowered the minister to set the fees for applications to use tinted film or glass which exceeded the stipulated limit. — Bernama