The Sabah Quarry Owners Association (SQOA) and the Malaysia Lorry Tipper Operators Association yesterday held a dialogue on the lorry dumper tipper test program for Sabah zone.

Malaysian Tipper Truck Association chairman Michael Loo Leep Chye said the purpose of the dialogue was to assist the Road Transport Department (RTD) to collect data on weight loads of lorry dumper tippers for the implementation of a new standard operating procedure (SOP).

“The purpose of the load truck weighing test is to collect data needed for RTD to formulate a new SOP.

“The Malaysian Tipper Truck Association has constantly received complaints from our industry players that their lorry drivers had been stopped and pulled over by RTD enforcement for allegedly being overloaded,” he said during the dialogue on the lorry dumper tipper test program (various loads) for Sabah zone at the Sepanggar Quarry on Saturday.

Among those present were Political Secretary to the Sabah Chief Minister, Datuk Dr Roland Chia Ming Shen, Malaysia Road Transport Department (Enforcement) director Datuk Lokman Jamaan and Sabah Quarry Owners Association (SQOA) president Datuk Ringo Wong Chen Khiong.

Loo said with the new SOP, it will help the lorry tipper drivers and RTD enforcement to come out with a clearer law.

“We received lots of complaints from our industry players and lorry tipper drivers that they were stopped and pulled over by RTD enforcement who claimed that their lorries were overloaded.

“When this happens, only one party will find us in the wrong, and that is the enforcement team. But what is the baseline of the alleged overloading? RTD said we overload but there is no proper guideline to determine how they came out with the conclusion and the offense was committed.

“Each RTD enforcement officer will come out with their own assumption of overloading based on what they perceive at that time. So there is no proper guideline to determine if one had overloaded their truck or not,” he said.

Loo also said that when a lorry tipper driver is being stopped by an enforcement officer, the driver is required to weigh their load and the driver cannot protest even if they know that they are not overloaded.

“I believe this is unfair to our industry players as there is no clear guideline. But I hope with this new SOP, it will make it clearer for all parties involved.

“It will be a win-win situation for all parties,” said Loo.

Meanwhile, Loo said the SOP is expected to be completed by middle of September this year.

“The SOP will be standardised nationwide.

“We have been collecting this data from lorry dumper tippers since 2018, but had to stop temporarily in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We resumed the data collection again and right now we are at the final zone.

“There are six zones and we expect this SOP to be made available to RTD once our data collection is complete,” said Loo.

The six zones are the North Zone, which comprises of Perlis, Kedah and Pulau Pinang; Central Zone (Negeri Sembilan, Melaka and Selangor); Sarawak Zone (Kuching), South Zone (Johor); East Zone (Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang); and Sabah Zone (Kota Kinabalu).

Source:
courtesy of THE BORNEO POST

by ELTON GOMES

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