Owners draw line on bus scrutiny
MINIBUS operators will complain this week to the Transport Department about what they say are unreasonable demands imposed in annual vehicle inspections.
They claim that an increasing number of vehicles have been rejected due to the change in the colour scheme.
This meant an extra inspection fee of about $500 and the loss of a day's business to attend the Kowloon Bay Motor Vehicles Examination Centre.
Public Light Bus Trade Union representatives will meet department officials on Friday.
Union chairman Ng Mau-shing said the examiners had become unreasonably demanding.
He said there was a lack of guidelines for the examiners and operators after the new colour scheme for more than 4,500 public light buses in the territory was implemented at the beginning of the month.
The scheme is designed to let mini-bus operators carry more advertising by moving the line on the middle of the vans' bodies to above their windows.
The Transport Department has urged owners whose vehicles are due for examination to respray their vans.
Mr Ng said some owners had just covered the line with yellow paint because a complete respray would cost them more than $2,000. The problem arose when the examiners classified the vans as 'dirty' and failed them.
'If the rejection was due to safety reason we could accept it, but I don't think the cover-up is unacceptable,' Mr Ng said.
'It will be hidden by advertisements anyway.' He said the department had yet to issue them with new advertising permits.
Acting chief motor vehicle examiner David Chan Yem-shang admitted there was stricter inspection of minibuses because of the new colour scheme.
'We'll be reasonable, but an untidy cover-up of the line will not be passed,' he said. 'The examiners will make reasonable decisions based on the testing manual.' Mr Chan said examination of public transport vehicles had to be strict.
A senior examiner at the Kowloon Bay centre said the concept of whether a vehicle was dirty or clean was 'general' and depended on individual examiners.
