Transport workers cry foul over policy to ditch 20-year-old vehicles

Kathmandu, Sept. 22

Self-employed transport workers have demanded with the government to expand the vehicle fitness testing facility across the country and allow the ‘technically fit’ vehicles to ply on the road even though they are in operation for more than 20 years.

“Our demand is that the vehicles should be allowed to run on the basis of their fitness test. Some vehicles could be unfit to run in 10 years while others won’t be worthless even after 30-40 years," President of Self-Employed Transport Workers’ Union (SETWU), Khadga Bahadur Giri, said at a press conference organised in the capital to protest the government policy to bar 20-year-old vehicles from running.

Currently there is only one vehicle fitness centre run by the government at Ekantakuna where, sometimes, entrepreneurs have to wait for up to six days for their turn to get their vehicle’s fitness checked. Another one is in Teku which is used for testing the fitness of private vehicles.

“The government should expand fitness centres to all seven provinces. Even though the government raises a large amount of revenue from the import and operation of vehicles, it has been reluctant for long to provide essential facilities and services to the entrepreneurs,” said Madhu Adhikari, Vice-President of SETWU.

The organisation maintained that the fitness of a vehicle depends on its care so putting all the vehicles in one basket is not appropriate. According to the transport entrepreneurs, vehicles imported from the third countries have longer life while vehicles made in India have comparatively shorter life-span but most of them are already displaced.

However, we don’t demand to permit the damaged and unfit vehicles to run, they said.

With the implementation of the policy, about 10,000 vehicles, registered with the government from 1996 to 2015 and used for public transportation, would be out of business. Most of these vehicles are the products like Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Kia and Hyundai. Since the price of these vehicles went up significantly in the previous decade, their replacement would propel the import of Indian vehicles which compared to their third counterparts have shorter life and lower quality, said the entrepreneurs.

According to Giri, replacement of these vehicles would result in the loss of about 10,000 job loss and 50,000 dependent family members will be affected. Self-employed transport entrepreneurs cover more than half of total businesspersons in this sector.

“Furthermore, it will jeopardize the investment of about Rs. 15.31 billion. The displacement of vehicles in the current situation will have a big impact on the foreign exchange reserves of the country,” he said.

Meanwhile, 11 banks and financial institutions and 124 cooperatives in the Kathmandu Valley have mobilsed loans to purchase micro-buses.

With the depleting foreign currency reserves, the government has imposed a ban on various luxury items, including vehielcs and asked the importers to manage cash margins on the imports of other items. The balance of payment is sufficient to manage the goods and services imports for eight months, according to the Nepal Rastra Bank.

The Department of Transport Management (DoTM) has recently seized more than two dozen vehicles used for public transport. It said that it has been implementing the policy to stop the two-decade old vehicles from running on the road.

The SETWU has submitted memorandums to   the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport of the federal government, Development and Technology Committee of the Parliament, DoTM and Ministry of Transport of all the seven provinces, demanding to correct this rider. “But, no one paid any attention to our demands,” said Adhikari.

Ravi KC, President of the United Transport Workers Association, said that the government has not stopped collecting tax from the vehicles that have been in operation for 20 years and transferring their ownership.

The government had announced the policy to replace 20-year-old vehicles more than two decades ago in 1999 but it had not been implemented.

Later, in 2014, the government began to implement the policy but seizing of vehicles has begun recently. 

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 24 September 2022.