PETALING JAYA: It is not true that there are more vehicles in the country than people, says former transport minister Tan Sri Liow Tiong Lai (pic).

       He said it was an exaggeration to claim there were 33 million vehicles compared to the current population as the figures took into account old British colonial era vehicles.

       He expressed doubt over a news report which claimed that the number of vehicles were more than Malaysia’s population.

       “I am sure the number of vehicles on the road is not more than the population as it included the registered vehicles from the British colonial days.

       “The report does not portray the true picture of the vehicle population,” a news portal quoted him as saying yesterday.

       Liow was commenting on the report which quoted a road safety expert saying that the number of vehicles in the country has overtaken the human population, with an increase of at least a million vehicles annually since 2019.

       Road safety expert, Prof Dr Kulanthayan KC Mani of Universiti Putra Malaysia, said there were 33.3 million registered vehicles nationwide last year versus the human population, which stood at 32.6 million.

       The news portal also quoted Road Transport Department (JPJ) director-general Datuk Zailani Hashim as saying that the department had handled 33.05 million vehicles in the past 75 years since it was incorporated as Registrar and Inspector of Motor Vehicles.

       Liow said the government should put the facts right and JPJ should provide the true picture by using the latest road tax renewal records to confirm the numbers.

       He added that a “death certificate” for inactive or dormant vehicles could also be created to know exactly the number of active vehicles in the country.

       Former Road Safety Department director-general Abd Ghafar Yusof said it was normal to include pre-Merdeka numbers in statistics to reflect the number of vehicles.