PETALING JAYA: Road tax renewal records should be used to give a clearer picture of the number of vehicles still in use in the country, says Tan Sri Liow Tiong Lai.
The former transport minister was referring to a recent report that said there were over 33 million registered vehicles in the country.
Liow said this figure was an exaggeration as it included vehicles from before Independence.
"I am sure the number of vehicles on the road is not more than the population as it includes registered vehicles from the British colonial days.
"The report has a misleading heading as it does not portray the true picture of the vehicle population," news portal FMT quoted him as saying today.
Road Transport Department (JPJ) director-general Datuk Zailani Hashim had said recently that the department had administered 33.05 million vehicles in the past 75 years since it was incorporated as the Registrar and Inspector of Motor Vehicles.
"The government should set the facts right and the JPJ should provide the true picture by using the latest road tax renewal records to confirm the numbers.
He added that a "death certificate" for inactive or disused vehicles could also be created to know the exact number of active vehicles in the country.
Former Road Safety Department director-general Abd Ghafar Yusof said it was the usual practice to include pre-Independence numbers in the country's statistics on vehicles.
"This practice was there until I retired (in 2016) and I don't understand why it is still being used today," he said.
He added that the figure was used to calculate the ratio of road deaths versus number of vehicles in the country.
"I have asked the Transport Ministry several times to use the latest road tax renewal database to go along with the reported number of road accidents and fatalities as one of the indexes of road safety," he said, adding that the suggestion had yet to be adopted.
