As a five-month mora­to­ri­um on in­spec­tion stick­ers comes to an end, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has warned er­rant mo­torists not to ex­pect any ex­ten­sions, say­ing they will be fined if they fail to com­ply with the law.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the Quinam Beach in Pe­nal on Fri­day, Sinanan warned that any mo­torist with an unin­spect­ed ve­hi­cle will be tick­et­ed by the po­lice.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 27(11) of the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act (48:50), “(a) reg­is­tered own­er of a pri­vate mo­tor ve­hi­cle or mo­tor­cy­cle, pub­lic ser­vice mo­tor ve­hi­cle, rental car, goods ve­hi­cle, om­nibus or trail­er, who fails to pro­duce the ve­hi­cle for in­spec­tion or dri­ves the ve­hi­cle with­out ob­tain­ing an in­spec­tion stick­er and cer­tifi­cate in ac­cor­dance these reg­u­la­tions com­mits an of­fence and is li­able, on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, to a fine of $5,000.”

Pri­vate ve­hi­cles are to be in­spect­ed af­ter five years from the man­u­fac­ture date, not the reg­is­tra­tion date, while trans­port ve­hi­cles are to be in­spect­ed one year af­ter the date of li­cens­ing.

Sinanan said the mora­to­ri­um will end on De­cem­ber 31.

"We are not con­sid­er­ing an­oth­er mora­to­ri­um. The rea­son it came about was that I was faced with a sit­u­a­tion where the Trans­port Di­vi­sion an­nounced a crack­down in li­cens­ing in­spec­tions but there were on­ly two sta­tions do­ing in­spec­tions and we had 200,000 ve­hi­cles to in­spect," Sinanan said.

He ex­plained that even if every­one want­ed an in­spec­tion done the Li­cens­ing Of­fice would have been un­able to in­spect every ve­hi­cle, so this was why he went to Cab­i­net and asked for a mora­to­ri­um which would have al­lowed over 60 pri­vate garages to do in­spec­tions.

"These garages were giv­en per­mis­sion to in­spect the T ve­hi­cles be­low 3200 kg. We have 60 garages that you can take the T ve­hi­cles for in­spec­tion. Now that the mora­to­ri­um comes to an end you have no ex­cuse now to not have your ve­hi­cles in­spect­ed," Sinanan added.

He al­so said that there were suf­fi­cient in­spec­tion stick­ers but not­ed that even if you did not get a stick­er, a cer­tifi­cate of in­spec­tion can be shown to the po­lice. He said if the po­lice and Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers find mo­torists with de­fec­tive cars but who were hold­ers of stick­ers, then the li­cense of the garage is­su­ing the stick­ers could be re­voked.