Al­though we firm­ly sup­port eco­nom­i­cal trans­port for all, we do not sup­port law­less­ness. Fam­i­lies are in­creas­ing­ly breath­ing heavy met­al car­cino­genic au­to emis­sions while asth­ma sky­rock­ets in every ur­ban neigh­bour­hood. In 1997, the UNC amend­ed the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles Act yet made no Reg­u­la­tions with re­spect to au­to emis­sions. The PNM did noth­ing for ten years to es­tab­lish reg­u­la­tions to con­trol ve­hi­cle emis­sions. Now in the con­tin­u­ing ab­sence of those reg­u­la­tions Min­is­ter Cadiz has an­nounced that he is per­mit­ting old­er ve­hi­cles in­to the coun­try.

Min­is­ter Cadiz is re­port­ed as say­ing: "Any ve­hi­cle over five years old is man­dat­ed to un­der­go a pre-reg­is­tra­tion in­spec­tion. So now that the age of the ve­hi­cle is be­ing ex­tend­ed from four to six years, it means that any ve­hi­cle com­ing in now, will lit­er­al­ly, as you sit down in Li­cens­ing Of­fice, go over the pit." Per­haps Mr Cadiz does not know that go­ing "over the pit" (brakes, brake lights, in­di­ca­tor lights, shocks, etc) has noth­ing to do with test­ing the emis­sion lev­els from a ve­hi­cle? He said the PP Gov­ern­ment does not be­lieve there would be any en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues aris­ing out of the im­por­ta­tion of old­er cars. Are we be­ing asked to be­lieve that old­er en­gines, old­er cars will not im­pact on air qual­i­ty, hu­man health and the en­vi­ron­ment?

To com­pound the Min­is­ter's high-hand­ed an­nounce­ment he in­di­cat­ed that they would be test­ing the air emis­sions from the ve­hi­cles. Sounds good? But what is the le­gal ba­sis for these tests?...None? What are the emis­sion stan­dards that will be used?...None ex­ist? Is there equip­ment at the Li­cens­ing Of­fices to test for emis­sions?... No? How of­ten will these ve­hi­cles be test­ed and by whom?...Un­known. Would pri­vate car own­ers have to get their MOWT stick­er at pri­vate garages and still go over the pit for emis­sion tests? Will pri­vate garages be per­mit­ted to con­duct emis­sion tests? Min­is­ter Cadiz should know that so many ques­tions must be an­swered be­fore there is a pol­i­cy change on the im­por­ta­tion of used cars but all we are left with is a Min­is­ter's vac­u­ous state­ments. There is al­ways con­sul­ta­tion, but the on­ly stake-hold­ers con­sult­ed were the used car deal­ers, the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

"De­vel­op­ment" with­out good pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion is the best road to un­sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. Deny­ing all pub­lic in­ter­est sec­tors, trans­porta­tion, au­to, me­chan­i­cal and oth­er en­gi­neers and sci­en­tists an op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­take in our changed and new gov­ern­ment of con­sul­ta­tion, and pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion is some­thing that we do not take light­ly. We all have a right to safe­guard our pub­lic in­ter­ests and we did not vote for this high-hand­ed ex­clu­sion. We are hear­ing ei­ther bias or blind­ness, but not truth. With­out prej­u­dice FFOS are re­spect­ful­ly call­ing on Min­is­ter Cadiz, on our Prime Min­is­ter to tem­porar­i­ly re­scind and post­pone this six-year-old car pol­i­cy un­til there are mean­ing­ful pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions and ap­pro­pri­ate Reg­u­la­tions are ap­proved by Par­lia­ment with in­fra­struc­ture for emis­sion test­ing es­tab­lished and op­er­a­tive. Un­less this is done, the PP Gov­ern­ment would com­pound the same ar­ro­gant and dic­ta­to­r­i­al ways of their pre­de­ces­sors, and this we will not per­mit.

Gary Aboud

Sec­re­tary

Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS)