Rebate delay angers

Press, 22 December 1978, Page 14

Rebate delay angers

The Canterbury Chamber of Commerce has backed transport firms in their denunciation of Ministry of Works delays in paying roaduser rebates.

The Road Transport Association in Canterbury says that “hundreds of thousands” of dollars are owed firms and truck operators in Canterbury. The . association’s national executive has put the national figure owed at almost SIM.

In particular, the chamber has taken issue with a comment made in “The Press”

of Saturday by the computer engineer for road-user charges. Mr A. F. Stacey, that the delays were causd in part by the failure of private enterprise to supply the promised hubodometers which measure mileage. The chamber’s president (Mr A. Williams) said that the delays were the result of “the hasty, illconceived legislation that we have had so much of. “The final decision on approved types of hubodometers was not given until October-November, 1977, and

regulations required them to be fitted by April 1, 1978,” he said. “In that short time, importers had to order them, and indent them, but did not know their share of the market. They did not know how quickly overseas manufacturers could supply them.”

The Ministry of Works had still not announced how much had been collected in the last six months in mileage tax; it was SI.BM out in its estimate last time, Mr Williams said.