INSURANCE COVERAGE FOR MOTOR VEHICLES

Inche Abdul Aziz Karim asked the Minister for Communications if he will take the necessary measures to ensure that every person applying for a motor vehicle licence has a valid policy of insurance to cover the vehicle for the full period for which the licence is to be taken out.

Mr Yong Nyuk Lin: Mr Speaker, Sir, I wish to thank the Member for Kallang for highlighting a problem which the Registrar of Vehicles has been faced with for some time.

It is true that under existing legislation, a vehicle owner need produce only an insurance policy valid on the day that he applies to renew the annual road licence. In some cases, the insurance policy may expire or becomes invalid before the road licence expires.

My Ministry proposes to introduce legislation soon to ensure that vehicle owners do take out insurance policies which will be valid for the full period for which a road licence is applied for. It has not been possible to do this earlier because of the immense problem of record keeping, which will soon be resolved when the Registry of Vehicles computerises its records by early 1972.