Finance Minister Forced To Withdraw Vehicle Bill

The Finance Minister, Yaw Osafo Marfo, has been compelled to withdraw the second hand vehicle importation bill, which sought to increase the age limit of imported second hand vehicles from 10 to 22 years.

The bill, entitled the Customs Excise and Preventive Service Management Amendment, (Act 2001), had received a lot of opposition from a number of lobby groups. These groups include a coalition of automobile dealers and other concerned environmental groups and agencies.

Even before the withdrawal of the bill, the Parliamentary select committee working on the bill had received a 35-page memorandum that ought to dissuade parliament from passing it. This memorandum covered a gauntlet of relevant of relevant issues ranging from government's tax revenues on secondhand car imports to the relationship between relatively older cars and environmental pollution, road safety and fuel use efficiency and resultant national fuel import bill.

The argument against extending maximum age helped steer already heated opposition in parliament. The result is that the Executive opted to withdraw the bill and reconsider its structuring.

The reluctance of parliament and a cross section of interested pressure groups to accept the law seems to mirror the views of the urban public. Members of the public that HSJ spoke to were of the view that these very old vehicles would not be very safe. Also, they would have very high maintenance costs, which might be pushed to commuters. The environment would also suffer, due to air pollution.

In the absence of any convincing argument by Minister for Finance to the contrary, he had no alternative than to withdraw the bill.

But the question to ask is what are these environmental agencies and groups doing about the very old, rickety vehicles on our roads that cause a worse nuisance than perhaps some home-used vehicles that are over 22 years.