Debated in Parliament on 27 Feb 2020.
Er Dr Lee Bee Wah asked the Minister for Transport whether taxi drivers aged 65 and above who have taken their medical assessments for their personal driving licence may be exempted from retaking the same tests for their vocational licence within the same year.
Mr Speaker, Traffic Police require all drivers aged 65 and above to pass a medical examination to certify their fitness to drive a private car once every three years, in order to retain their Class 3 personal driving licences. Among these older drivers who wish to drive a taxi, LTA requires them to also pass a medical examination with additional occupation-related health checks to certify their fitness to renew their Taxi Driver Vocational Licences (TDVL). We subject taxi drivers to more stringent medical assessment as they clock a much higher mileage than other motorists. This is to protect the commuting public.
LTA is working with the Traffic Police to align the two medical assessment processes. Before the end of this year, taxi drivers who have passed their TDVL medical assessments should be able to use them to renew their Class 3 personal driving licences.
Er Dr Lee Bee Wah.
Thank you, Sir. I would like to thank the Senior Minister of State. I am very happy to hear that these will be aligned. It will definitely cost less to our residents. I have two supplementary questions.
According to my resident, for Class 4 and 5, Traffic Police's enhanced Heavy Vehicle Proficiency Test fee is about $450. LTA's enhanced Taxi Driver's Vocational Licence test is $136. Both require separate medical examinations for both licence-holders aged 69 to 74 years. Residents feel that this is very expensive, very heavy on them. I welcome the alignment and I would also like to urge that the test fee can be further reduced. Four hundred fifty dollars is very high to many of them.
The second question is, at this difficult period of the COVID-19 crisis, would the Ministry work with taxi companies to work on rental reduction? Many of them have given feedback that their incomes have been reduced by as much as 50%.
Mr Speaker, for the test fees, we are continually looking at the process of how we do these medical assessments. We will take the test fees into consideration. I thank the Member for her suggestion. We will have a look at this.
In terms of the broader issue of the taxi operators, we have announced some measures to help the taxi industry – some are directed at the drivers and some are directed at the operators. We will continue to work closely with the association, in line with the tripartite model, to look and see what is the effectiveness of the interventions we put in place and to see whether or not further interventions are necessary.
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