Dear Editor – Recently I went to the Ministry of Finance to find out details about a particular vehicle registration.
The Public Officer was kind enough to give me a printout entitled Certificate of Registration and Ownership.
Later that day I perused the Certificate. The document said and I quote “This certifies that the below vehicle is owned by the person named above in accordance with the provisions of the Road Transport Act and Regulations…”
Pardon me, but I have searched everywhere in vain to locate the Road Transport Act and Regulations.
I am not even sure if Parliament ever passed a law by such names.
I am aware we have a Roads Act and a Traffic Act. But where the hell did the Road Transport Act come from? Was it a cut and paste job done by a consultant who did not thoroughly check his work?
If indeed we do have a Road Transport Act, does that mean the Traffic Act has been repealed?
But then why is the Traffic Act still in existence? Or is the Road Transport Act a ghost legislation?
In any event, I am of the view that all the vehicles with licenses procured under the ghost legislation ought to be taken off the roads until the Government issues proper licenses under the true law of our country.
Lately, I was perusing the Immigration Act 2012 and came across section 7(2) that refers to a “Refugee Status Determinations Act”.
I have again searched around but couldn’t locate such a law.
Maybe the Ministry for Immigration or the National Parliament would know about the existence of such a law. But for mine, I consider it rather absurd that we have a piece of legislation that refers to another non-existing law.
One wonders whether our legislators were vigilante when they passed laws in Parliament.
Or did they simply rubber-stamp the lousy effort of some highly paid consultant?
At a time when our MPs are again engaged in the numbers game, maybe our people should think about electing people into Parliament in the future who can not only count 1, 2, 3 but also read and understand A, B, C. Anything less would be a disgrace to this nation.
Gary Fa’aitoa
Central Honiara
