The recent spate of four bus accidents in the space of 11 days is a cause for alarm and concern.

Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi has mooted a plan for all bus drivers to be given urine tests on a daily basis to check if they are high on drugs. Although the idea of the urine tests is a good one, it must be studied further. Conducting urine tests on a daily basis for all bus drivers is indeed a mammoth task. Huge cost will be incurred in this massive exercise and it is time-consuming and involves a lot of hassles.

These urine tests for bus drivers should instead be conducted randomly on an unannounced periodically basis, and not every day. If these tests are conducted daily, those drug addicts may find ways to avoid or even to beat the tests.

No country in the world has such daily exercise of urine tests for bus drivers and knowing that Malaysia has a lack of maintenance culture, it is reasonable to believe that this new daily urine test project won’t last more than a few months.

An academic research study should be done by experts in the relevant field pertaining to the bus accidents and for these suggestions to be adopted by the authorities immediately.

On another issue, I reiterate my proposal which I made two weeks ago that nationwide random urine tests for the police must be carried out regularly as a recent news has revealed that out of 100 police officers who had attended an integrity course, 14 of them were tested positive for drugs. This severely jeopardises the integrity of the police and it is also imperative that the public be informed of the criminal action meted out on these culprits who are licensed gun carriers.

LIM LIP ENG is the member of Parliament for Segambut.