It’s a problem that Malaysian motorists have long complained about and yet, the JPJ (Road Transport Department) has ignored the matter, while successive Transport ministers have also never seemed to be aware. We’re referring to the roadtax sticker that motorists have to replace once a year on their motor vehicles that doesn’t stick properly and curls up off the glass after just a short while. At one time, even the print on the paper faded.
The problem is very well known and it’s surprising that nothing has been done all these years. One would imagine that the solution would be easy enough by either asking the supplier to change the material, improve the quality or simply change the supplier. None of these seems to have been done and the only suggestion given by the JPJ was to request for a replacement – a solution that is inconvenient as motorists have to go to the JPJ office and queue up.
Now our new Transport Minister, Anthony Loke, has given assurance that something will be done. He gave this assurance after a meeting with the JPJ management yesterday to discuss a number of matters. While his predecessors did not seem to care about the matter, this minister does. Perhaps it could be because he has probably been driving his own car for a long time and has personally seen how the roadtax sticker comes off.
Other Transport ministers have been known to promise action for many matters but not all have been followed through. But we can probably trust Anthony Loke to make sure that a solution will be found soon and he has said that there will be a ‘big change’ in 2023 [regarding roadtax stickers]. From his actions so far where he has acted promptly to resolve certain problems, we’re sure that the JPJ people tasked with finding the solution will not be able to just KIV (government-speak for ‘Keep In View’) it.
The switch to these stick-on plastic roadtax discs was said to make them harder to steal. They are designed to break apart if peeled off and while that is a good idea, it creates problems for those with tinting film on their glass or if the windscreen is broken.
Before, the roadtax discs were made entirely of paper and displayed on the glass by using a small plastic film to hold them against the windscreen. It was a simple and reliable way for decades. To make it easier for police to quickly check, their shapes and colours were changed each year.
Perhaps now that the JPJ is forced to look into the matter, they will propose doing away with the roadtax disc altogether. With modern technologies like RFID and QR codes, it should be possible to have some other way to show that roadtax has been paid.
And while they’re at it, perhaps the minister should also get them to study standardization of numberplates. There are already regulations on the technical aspects of a numberplate but as we often see, there are motorists who just don’t care about following the law. How they get away with it for long is a puzzle since they should be stopped when seen by enforcement officers.
One solution could be for the JPJ to issue numberplates, just like how it issues roadtax discs. This is done in some other countries and it ensures uniformity. Everyone has the same type of numberplate and there are no variations since they cannot make the plates themselves.
