Maputo — There will be no extension of the 31 July deadline for vehicles circulating in Maputo and Matola cities to be inspected for mechanical faults, the National Traffic Institute (INAV) has warned.

Vehicle owners had six months to take their cars, trucks or motorbikes to the inspection centres where the brakes, steering, tyres, lights, engine fumes and other safety aspects are checked. The inspections began on 1 February and the period for owners to take their vehicles voluntarily to the centres ends on Saturday.

After that date, drivers in Maputo and Matola without the sticker on their windscreens showing that the car has been inspected will be liable to penalties.

Cited in Friday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", the Deputy General Director of INAV, Jorge Miambo, ruled out any extension of the deadline, despite the huge queues that have occurred at the Maputo and Matola centres over the past couple of days.

Miambo said the only good reason for extending the deadline would be if the inspection centres had been unable to do their job properly. But the problem, he argued, was not the capacity of the centres but the fact that most motorists had chosen not to take their cars to the centres earlier.

"We are not going to extend the deadline, since that would mean not monitoring vehicles on the public highway", said Miambo. "If we felt that more days were needed for the inspections, we would have announced it a couple of months ago".

So as from Monday, the traffic police in Maputo, Matola and the western city of Tete (the three areas where inspections have been taking place) will be entitled to demand to see the sticker proving that the vehicle has passed its inspection.

Any change in the deadline, Miambo argued, would compromise the government's road safety programme, given the important role that mechanical faults in vehicles play in traffic accidents.

"This year is the year for correction", he said. "As from next year, each individual will know when he must take his car to be inspected again".

He warned that, if the police find a car without an inspection sticker, the driver can be ordered to take it off the road.

The harsh fact, however, is that most drivers seem willing to challenge the state over this. As of Wednesday, only 16,000 vehicles had been inspected in Maputo and Matola - a small minority of the vehicles n the roads. It is reasonable to assume that many drivers are refusing to take their cars to the inspection centres because they are fully aware that the vehicles will fail the tests.

The scenes at both the Maputo and the Matola inspection centres on Wednesday and Thursday were chaotic. The queues were such that the Maputo centre, in the outlying suburb of Zimpeto, remained open until around midnight.

AIM spoke to one driver who was in the queue for over ten hours. In fact, there were two queues - one to check the car documents, and the second to inspect the vehicles. The company running the centres, Control Gold, proved extremely poor at organizing the queues, and there were many incidents of opportunists jumping the queues.

Inspection centres have not yet opened in the other eight provinces. Miambo said that, by the end of August, centres will be operational in Gaza, Sofala, Nampula and Niassa. The centres in Inhambane, Manica, Zambezia and Cabo Delgado will begin their work later in the year.

Vehicles registered in these eight provinces will be able to circulate in Maputo, Matola and Tete, despite their lack of an inspection sticker.