PUTRAJAYA, June 27 — The Road Transport Department (JPJ) will conduct via e-bidding its tender for limited-edition special registration number plates in conjunction with this year’s Merdeka Day celebration, Transport Minister Anthony Loke said today.
Loke said a local IT company has offered its services for the pilot project after the ministry planned to use the conventional way of manual bidding.
“The name of the company will be unveiled next week in a memorandum of understanding signing ceremony pending approval from the Finance Ministry after we have agreed to the system in principle.
“The company approached the ministry and volunteered to take on the project as part of their corporate social responsibility initiative, to which we agreed on the condition that there was no fee involvement,” he said after the ministry’s post-Cabinet meeting today.
However, the bidding scheduled to take place from July 2 has been postponed to August 1 to facilitate system calibration and a test run for the online e-bidding programme.
Loke added the minimum bidding amount for the vehicle registration numbers of Malaysia 1 up to Malaysia 9999 will be announced next week.
He said the winning bids would be finalised and processed within three days through the e-bidding system with more people encouraged to do so compared to the conventional method as they would not have to travel to the JPJ office anymore.
“For example, an individual must pay a 50 per cent deposit through a bank draft during the bidding process and if they did not win, the deposit takes two to three months to be returned.
“That discourages people because the money cannot be used and is kept until the bidding completes,” he said, adding the e-bidding process would use credit card transactions.
Loke also said the government has no obligations to award the company anything in the future after the project’s success is reviewed.
“They have agreed to do so to generate revenue for the government and the ministry would consider e-bidding for all number plates in the future if the pilot project proves successful,” he said.
