10-year driving licence renewal: Action will still be taken against traffic offenders - Loke

SEREMBAN: Enforcement action will still be taken against any individual who commits a traffic offence even if his or her driving licence has been renewed for a period of 10 years, says Transport Minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook.

He said the Road Transport Department (JPJ) had a system capable of detecting offenders, and actions such as licence suspension or revocation for certain offences will still be carried out.

"Even if some parties claim that this way people will not pay their summonses and so on, we have another way (to catch traffic offenders) which is digital.

"If they commit an offence such as (being involved in) a crash case, their licence will still be suspended, it does not mean that if the licence holder has already paid (for the licence renewal) it will not be suspended," he said during a visit to the Seremban JPJ branch.

Meanwhile, Loke said the government had started a new policy of allowing a 10 per cent discount for all driving licence categories if they were renewed for a period of 10 years.

"You'll only pay RM270 instead of RM300. That's a new policy we're introducing to make it easier for people. I had received a lot of feedback and requests from the public to extend the maximum renewal period for driving licences," he said.

In another development, Loke said JPJ will continue efforts to strengthen its integrity and enforcement to overcome the problems posed by 'tonto' and weaknesses will be rectified to prevent information from being leaked to external parties.

"We know there are attempts to get information from insiders and so on, JPJ will continue to strengthen integrity. The tonto issue is indeed one that plagues the JPJ.

Loke said, however, whatever method used by irresponsible parties would not be able to challenge the laws of the country.

"Whatever their trick is to avoid enforcement, whether it's using more sophisticated telecommunications, JPJ can overcome it with more effective methods," he said.

He was commenting on the current tactic of tontos using WhatsApp and Telegram to leak information on JPJ enforcement activities.

-- BERNAMA