Soon everyone can become a ‘VIP’
PETALING JAYA: Fancy being a “VIP”? Well, having such “recognition”, albeit attached to your vehicle only, will be a reality for some come 2017.
The Sun reported that vehicle registration numbers of “VIP 1″ to “VIP 9999″ will be available for bidding, courtesy of the Pahang Tourism and Cultural Council.
The Pahang state government has reportedly agreed to pay RM1 million to the Road Transport Department (RTD) for the exclusive right to sell the vanity numbers in conjunction with Visit Pahang Year 2017.
The daily also questioned why the RTD was opting to “lose out” by receiving only RM1 mil for 9,999 numbers (which works out to about RM100 per number), when it could make thousands or even millions for government coffers by bidding the numbers itself.
The recent auction of the “F1″ registration number attracted a bid of RM5 million.
Deputy Transport Minister Aziz Kaprawi told the daily that the “VIP” prefix was similar in nature to other vanity numbers such as Patriot, Perfect, G1M, 1M4U, BAMbee, Sukom and many others, in which the profits went to NGOs.
“This is similar to ‘G1M’ with sales proceeds from the number plates used to support the Kelab Explorasi 7 Benua Malaysia expeditions to Mount Everest and ‘1M4U’ for 1Malaysia for Youth movement,” he was quoted as saying.
Last year, the RTD received RM1 mil from Yayasan Patriot Negara Malaysia (YPN) to own and auction the “Patriot” prefix, which according to the deputy chairman of the foundation, received poor response due to “bad vibes” and “sabotage” by bad press and baseless allegations.
The foundation only managed to make about RM2 mil in sales, far from its targeted RM10 mil.
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