Removal of abandoned vehicles to be sped up
PUTRAJAYA: The National Transport Council (NTC) is drafting standard guidelines to speed up the process of disposing of abandoned vehicles to one month.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the absence of standard operating procedures (SOPs) resulted in a time-consuming process of between six months and a year.
“Once SOPs have been drafted, after getting input from all stakeholders, including the Road Transport Department (RTD) and local councils, they will be tabled in the next council meeting, scheduled to take place in November,” he said after attending an NTC meeting.
“When the council has endorsed it, I expect the SOPs can be implemented by next year.”
He said owners of abandoned vehicles would be issued a oneweek notice instead of one month.
“In less than three weeks, the vehicle will be disposed off and RTD will deregister it.”
He listed inconveniences faced by local councils when dealing with abandoned vehicles, such as finding places to keep them before they were scrapped, and the red tape involved in removing such vehicles, including having to place an advertisement in newspapers if owners did not respond to the one-month notice.
From 2014 to last year, Loke said eight local councils, including Kuala Lumpur City Hall, Petaling Jaya City Council and Ipoh City Council, recorded about 15,000 abandoned vehicles.
He said there was an upward trend in vehicles being abandoned.
“I do not understand how anyone can abandon their vehicles. They do not think about other people. We even have a case of an abandoned vehicle being left in front of the Selangor menteri besar’s official residence in Shah Alam.”
He warned that highway authorities would tow vehicles that were left unattended for more than two hours.
He said the council discussed the issue of heavy vehicles being parked haphazardly.
“The NTC has asked the local councils to find suitable areas for commercial and heavy vehicles to park.”
The council, he added, also discussed expanding the free bus ride initiative as practised in Selangor and Penang, and was briefed on the e-hailing industry.