‘Runners’ are real winners in the vehicle inspection game

 

It is believed that the transport ministry has received four bids for the lucrative road worthiness inspection services now conducted by Puspakom, in which three million vehicles are inspected a year at an official rate of RM55-RM75 per lorry.

The number of bidders is very small compared to the size of the haulage industry, and this should get transport minister Loke Siew Fook thinking.

Has his agenda to improve life for truckers and reduce costs for the transport industry been diminished by ill-advice, well-intentioned or not?

The main setback is that the transport ministry has refused to allow the new investors to charge a fee higher than the current RM60 per six-monthly mandatory inspection for commercial vehicles.

The minister thinks that capping the price does a favour to truckers and keeps costs low. Not so.

Touts, or runners, are already charging as much as RM350 per heavy commercial vehicle to put the lorry through the inspection and have it certified as roadworthy in a day as scheduled.

Secrets of the runners

Unofficially, almost all commercial vehicles go through runners – self-employed persons who specialise in ensuring a successful inspection process within one working day.

Why can runners be more successful than the lorry’s lawful owner-operator? A runner operates from one Puspakom centre where he’s familiar with his own clique of select officials.

When he drives the lorry into the Puspakom centre, the runner has already washed and painted the vehicle, and fixed on roadworthy tyres on loan for inspection day.

For the rest of the inspection where there is an element of subjectivity, he is probably provided more lenient treatment than normal Puspakom customers.

For instance, about 70% of trucks are fitted with non-compliant reflective stickers. Puspakom procedures require a visual inspection of these reflective stickers rather than the use of a reflective meter with a digital read-out of candlepower.

This anomaly occurred because the installation of reflective rear stickers to improve visibility of trucks in low-light conditions was mandated by the road transport department (JPJ) many years after Puspakom had been established, along with a list of fixed prices approved by the government.

This is one of the loopholes where a vehicle inspector will use his discretion to decide whether to pass a truck or order a return visit for a second inspection.

Playing the inspection game

The crux of the matter is that a high percentage of commercial vehicles will not pass a six-monthly inspection because they are poorly maintained.

Going through the inspection is very much like a game – for a fee, an agent will even replace certain parts (on loan) for the vehicle to pass the test, following which the sub-par parts are replaced, and the vehicle goes back on the road.

In fact, the system of inspections and enforcement needs to be disrupted in a positive way or else we will be back to square one. The contractor is a 

specialist

 – in finding the loopholes and working around them.

Simple arithmetic will show that the volume of inspections is so high there is no way to provide proper inspections without setting up an automated system with major centres in every large town or city.

To provide such facilities and the trained people to run them efficiently, each inspection must cost in the hundreds, so what we are currently doing, and what the minister is doing to encourage better services for truckers will still fail because the economics will not make sense.

The UK way

One solution will be to allow franchise holders, importers and distributors to apply to provide mandatory roadworthiness inspections in their workshops. In the UK, qualified workshops provide the MoT tests.

In fact, given our present situation, it is as good as not having any six-month inspection, because the ones that are really complying are probably a small number.

The overloading of commercial vehicles and the speed at which they are driven are factors in the high rate of accidents. There is a correlation between gross weight, speed, and the ability of the driver to control and stop the vehicle in an emergency.

Spot checks on roadworthiness should be an important feature of enforcement.

Fatal crashes of cars and motorcycles rear-ending into trucks happen monthly if not daily; there was a recent one last month where three occupants of a car died on the spot when the car crashed into a prime mover-trailer rig.

If the lorry has broken down and obstructed traffic, to the point where a car crashed into its rear, isn’t this a result of equipment failure? Or is it an operator error that caused the car to crash into the rear of the lorry.

The effort to reform Malaysia’s commercial vehicle inspection regime has positive intentions but faces significant challenges. Structural changes are needed to create a more efficient and safer system beneficial to all parties involved.

The goal should be to maintain a balance where both safety and cost-efficiency coexist, leading to a more sustainable transport industry. - FMT

Yamin Vong can be reached at his Facebook page, yamin.com.my.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.