Ctg transport owners for re-fixing commercial vehicles' economic life
They also demanded the determination of vehicles’ life span from the date of BRTA registration.
Greater Chattogram Public and Goods Transport Owners Federation demanded the revision of the economic life of all types of commercial vehicles and reset 30 years of vehicles' life span.
"If the government decision in this regard is implemented, about 65,000 buses, minibuses, trucks, and covered vans will have to be scrapped. With this, almost lakhs of owner-workers directly and indirectly involved in the transport sector will have to live inhumane life," Member Secretary of the federation Manjurul Alam Chowdhury Manju said at a press conference at Chattogram press club on Tuesday.
In May, the government fixed the economic life of buses and minibuses at 20 years and that for goods-laden vehicles, including trucks and covered vans, at 25 years.
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Manjurul Alam, member secretary of the federation, further said a scrap of a huge number of commercial vehicles together will lead to a vehicle shortage in the country and a need to import since the current economic recession and dollar crisis are prevailing.
"The Implementation of the Motor Vehicle Scrap Policy will create a crisis in the country's transport sector. Therefore, there is a possibility that the image of the government will be tarnished since the national elections are six months away," he opined.
Leaders of the transport owners' federation also put forward more demands including revision of the Motor Vehicle Scrap Policy and its implementation from the financial year 2024-2025, involving transport owners' representatives from divisional levels in policy formulation of vehicles' economic life.
They also demanded the determination of vehicles' economic life from the date of BRTA registration and enabling the BRTA server to update documents up-to-date.
While read-out the written speech, Manjurul Alam stated that if the damaged engine or engine parts, body, or other accessories are replaced, all the vehicles are fully roadworthy according to BRTA's fitness certificate.
Although the government set the economic life of commercial vehicles, a guideline on scrapping them has yet to be finalised. The authorities would start dumping these vehicles once the gazette is published. The gazette setting the economic life has not been published either.
