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 (SOP) had resulted in a time-consuming process of between six months and a year.
“Once the SOP has been drafted, after getting input from all stakeholders, including the Road Transport Department (RTD) and local councils, it will be tabled in the next council meeting, scheduled to take place in November,” he said after attending a National Transport Council meeting.
“When the council has endorsed it, I expect the standard SOP can be implemented by next year.”
He said owners of abandoned vehicles would be issued a one-week notice instead of the current one month.
“In less than three weeks, the vehicle will be disposed off and RTD will de-register the said vehicle.”
He listed some of the inconveniences faced by local councils when dealing with abandoned vehicles such as finding places to keep the vehicles before they were scrapped, and the red tape involved in removing such vehicles, including having to place an advertisement in the 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 don’t understand how anyone can abandon their vehicles. They don’t 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.”
Loke warned that highway authorities would tow away vehicles that were left unattended for more than two hours.
He said the council had also 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,” he said.
The council, he added, had also discussed expanding the free bus ride initiative as practised in Selangor and Penang, and was briefed on the e-hailing industry.