XN000022-1973-01-03 — Page 28

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Wednesday, January 3, 1973

DRIVING TESTS FOR LORRIES TO BE RESUMED

Within Next Four Weeks

Limited driving tests for goods vehicles and certain categories

of public and private omnibuscs are expected to be resumed within the next four weeks, the Financial Secretary, the Hon. C.P. Haddon-Cave, said this

afternoon.

These tests have been suspended since October 9 last year as

a peasure taken by the Transport Department to concentrate its efforts

on an accelerated programme of testing for licences to drive private cars.

Other measures taken by the Department as from September 11 were the employment of volunteer civil servants to conduct tests in the evenings, at week-ends and on public holidays and the combination of the intermediate

and final rond tests into one.

The Financial Secretary, in reply to Mrs. Ellen Li, said that

it was hoped that these measures would, within a limited period of time, eliminate the "enormous backlog" of tests for licences to drive private cars.

"Indeed," he said "as a result of the accelerated programme, the number of appointments for road tests per day has risen from some 350 to 900."

He added that "the waiting time between the written test and the combined road test has fallen from a year to less than three months, although the actual number of aspirant drivers waiting to take their road tests is about the same as before at 60,000 and so is the number of tests which

have to be conducted."

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