Stricter inspections will be applied to motorbikes and cars to ensure that technical and environmental protection requirements are met.
According to the General Statistics Office, the millions of motorbikes and cars on the roads were responsible for about 70 per cent of the existing air pollution in urban areas in Viet Nam, and their technical errors were among the main causes of traffic accidents.
Trinh Ngoc Giao, general director of the Viet Nam Register Department, said that there were 88 registration centres nationwide responsible for checking the technical safety and environmental protection standards of all vehicles.
He said that this aimed to lower the number of technical errors causing traffic accidents to less than 1 per cent of all cases, and to curb air pollution.
Nguyen Huu Tri, head of the Vehicle Register Department, said that all vehicles would need checks once a year, and would receive a stamp and certificate proving they had met the technical standards and environmental protection requirements.
Since 2007, registration centres had checked more than 10 million vehicles, and 500,000 imported cars and motorbikes had received quality licenses.
Do Huu Duc, deputy director of the Viet Nam Register Department, said that the centres would co-operate with traffic and environment police to find vehicles that were violating technical standards and emissions requirements.
Giao said that the directors of the registration centres that allowed these vehicles with technical and emission errors to keep travelling would receive strict punishments.
Duc said that the model of private registration centres would be reconsidered since violations were happening most often in these places.
Tran Van Loi, director of the Nam Dinh Province Transport Department, said that the Viet Nam Register Department did not yet have any management systems to ensure the quality of these private registration centres. "Their violations are only discovered by irregular checks, and that’s not enough," he said.
Giang Dinh Phu, director of Hai Phong’s Register Centre, said that the registration fee of VND300,000 (US$16) for each vehicle was too low for private-registration centres to break even on their initial investments. So some of them had lowered technical standards and offered certificates to vehicles that were not up to snuff.
Le Duong, a driver, said that in Viet Nam, drivers never voluntarily had their vehicles checked. They only went in when threatened with fines or punishments.