Progress of Initiative to Install Speed-management Devices on Lorries that Ferry Migrant Workers

Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) what is the progress of Traffic Police’s planning on the initiative to require speed-management devices on lorries that are used to ferry migrant workers; and (b) what is the expected timeline for the adoption of such devices on all such lorries.

In March 2022, we announced that the Government would mandate lorries with Maximum Laden Weight between 3,500 kilogrammes and 12,000 kilogrammes to be fitted with speed management devices or speed limiters.

The Traffic Police has since been working with industry stakeholders to evaluate the different types of speed limiter and to develop the implementation plan.

Industry stakeholders have given feedback that they would require some time to reconfigure their products to meet our requirements and conduct technical tests to ensure safety and roadworthiness. The industry will also need time to ramp up the supply and to ensure that there are sufficient authorised agents to install these devices. We aim to announce the details later this year.

I thank the Minister of State for his answer. My supplementary question would be that I believe the earlier timeline that had been announced, if I am not wrong, was the first half of this year. Given that there is a safety issue here at stake, would the Minister of State be able to commit to a timeline for the adoption of these speed limiters, going forward? I hope that it would be a short timeline, given that we have worked on it for quite some time now.

Madam, I thank the Member for the supplementary question. As I shared earlier, we have been actively engaging the industry. As you can see, it is a wide range of fleets of lorries, from the older ones to the newer ones. We are grateful that the industry players have come forward to share with us frankly and they also shared with us some of the supply chain constraints that the world is facing today.

On our part, we are doing our best to work with them to make sure that what we do and finally roll out will have considerations with regard to the costs, availability, effectiveness and the installation process. I assure the Member that we will do our best in a timely manner.