Many of Portugal’s vehicle testing centres have been obliged to install expensive new equipment to enable their technicians to test motorbikes of 250cc or more.
Approximately 150 inspection centers paid an average of €200,000 each for the equipment upgrade and have been ready since last October when the legislation led them to believe that, come Jan 1st , 2017, it would be a legal requirement for these motorbikes to be tested.
In total, the inspection centres have invested €30 million to adapt their facilities and to buy in new equipment but the law has not been enacted, nor is scheduled to do so in the foreseeable future.
The government assured the centres that compulsory inspections of motorcycles will start in 2017, saying that the delay in triggering the law was due to the test centres not being ready.
The National Association of Automobile Inspection Centers says this is nonsense, its members have been ready for months and it that the government is using them as a scapegoat for its own inaction.
The Ministry of Planning and Infrastructure, under minister Perdo Marquês, explained that the new tests will be regulated by a new law at some point but admitted that there is, "still no date for its publication."
In fact, the new law started in its slow progress through the parliamentary process in 2012, to oblige owners to arrange periodic inspections for their motorcycles, tricycles and quad-bikes of over 250 cc, of which there are around 80,000 in the country.
Test centres that have paid for the new equipment, often taking out expensive short-term bank loans, are not best pleased that they are unable to earn a cent from its use and now are threatening legal action against the ministry which they feel, has misled them - in addition to blaming them unjustifiably for the delay.
Meanwhile, Portugal's roads are populated by 80,000 potentially unsafe vehicles.
