A COMPUTERISED test for learner drivers is to be scrapped because the Hong Kong School of Motoring wants to save $500,000 a year. The school, suffering from shrinking demand, said it could no longer afford to operate the system. Corporate affairs manager, Percy Ho Chi-yuen, said the system had been tested for three years and operated free for the Transport Department. Learner drivers who wanted to take a written test could do so the conventional way, or with the computer systems at two Transport Department centres. Both cost $510 payable to the department. Mr Ho said the 'touch-screen' computer project had proved successful but they no longer wanted to pay the cost of managing it. 'The school invented the system and supplied with it the necessary manpower and maintenance service. It costs us about $500,000 a year,' he said. Former motoring school driving instructor, Lau Shiu-hung, who was among a group of instructors made redundant recently, said the withdrawal of the service proved the school had taken a backward step in providing good services to learners. A Transport Department spokesman said: 'There will be no change in waiting time or syllabus.'
