New licence plates have security features to prevent theft, forgery. (Brunei Times)

Quratul-Ain Bandial
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

Sunday, July 4, 2010

THE public confusion and grumblings surrounding the rationale behind the newly-introduced licence plates may now come to a halt.



The resized licence plates introduced by the Land Transport Department (LTD) in May have important security features that will prevent forgeries and help enforcement agencies to monitor theft and misuse of cars, Hj Norisham Hj Alias, a senior licensing officer at the LTD, told The Brunei Times yesterday.

The initials "JPD", the Malay acronym for the Land Transport Department, and the initials of the licence plate vendors, are embossed into each plate to make them easily identifiable as legitimate and registered with the LTD.

"Sometimes people switch plates between cars, which is illegal. Also, when cars are stolen, thieves can easily make counterfeit licence plates so that the car can never be identified and recovered by police," he said in a telephone interview.

Many new licence plate owners have noticed the security feature, where each of the seven authorised vendors' initials have a unique location on the plate. The acronyms are embossed in black so they blend into the licence plate and are not easily noticeable.

"This is so that they cannot be easily copied," said Hj Norisham, adding that it would be very costly to reproduce the new aluminium plates because the mold to create them costs up to $5,000.

"I suppose theoretically it can still be copied but a thief would have to invest a lot of money into a counterfeiting operation." Nick Tay of of Hock Motor Company, one of the authorised vendors, said the German-made machines that produce the licence plates cost approximately $150,000. He added that additional capital had to be spent on purchasing the molds and aluminium plates.

"Even though the law states that licence plates cannot be customised with different fonts and colours this has not really been enforced as not all companies have abided by the rules. I think this is a good move by the department," he said.

Two machines are utilised in the manufacturing process — a thermal firming machine and an embossing machine.

"We can get the machines from China, but we've found the quality of the plates is not as good. The colour of the letters and numbers come off after a while," said Tay.

Mathew, a technician at Syarikat Bayu Ilham Motor Sdn Bhd said that the new plates now will be able to withstand wear and tear better.

"The old plates were made of plastic and the letters could fall off easily. People can easily rearrange the letters which makes a car harder to trace if it is stolen," he said.

"According to our statistics, there are 230,000 cars on the road. But only 112,000 are registered with the LTD. That means the rest have fallen through the cracks. Maybe they have not been re-registered or people have switched licence plates between their cars so they don't have to pay road tax for more than one car every year," Tay pointed out.

The LTD requires authorised vendors to report to them every three months, updating their database with all the people who have requested new licence plates to be made. Vendors who flout this regulation risk getting their permit revoked.

Tay said it was critical for the LTD to have updated information of motorists in their database in case of a car theft or an accident.

"For example if a driver flees the scene of an accident and someone catches the plate number, the police can trace the company that made the plate and access details of the person," he said.

The LTD will begin enforcing the Identification Marks Act and Regulation 2008 in 2011, requiring licence plates with three letters as well as newly-registered vehicles and re-registered vehicles to change their plates to the new format. Owners of vehicles with one or two letters in their licence plates may retain their old plates.

With effect on January 2011, enforcement officers from JPD and the Royal Brunei Police Force will take action against owners of vehicles who fail to abide by the regulations. Non-compliant motorists will be fined not more than $1,000 for the first offence and not more than $2,000 for the second offence or jailed for not more than three months.

The Brunei Times