Get ready to see some new number plates in town.
The current number plate sequence for the Federal Territories of Putrajaya and Kuala Lumpur will be retired, and new prefixes of registration number will be assigned for car owners starting from June and July respectively, according to a news report by The Sun Daily.
The letter “F” will be assigned for Putrajaya, while car owners in Kuala Lumpur will be allocated the letter “V”.
Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Aziz Kaprawi told The Sun Daily that the “F” prefix was selected under the request of the Putrajaya Corporation (PPj) recently. The prefix “F”, which will be implemented on car plates starting 1st June, was selected as it stood for “Federal” in “Federal Territory”.
The car plates prefix in Kuala Lumpur will be refreshed with the letter “V” after Hari Raya, but no particular date has been selected. Director-general of Road Transport Department (RTD), Datuk Seri Ismail Ahmad, also said that the current prefix will be retired in stages starting from mid-July.
What does this mean?
To summarize, cars in Kuala Lumpur will no longer have the number plates in the format of “W 9999 A” anymore, but instead will register as “VXX 9999”. It is similar to the previous format, but with a different prefix. As for Putrajaya, the license plate will no longer read “Putrajaya 9999”, but “FXX 9999”.
Some might argue that the RTD are changing something that works perfectly well, as car users in Putrajaya and Kuala Lumpur are generally contented with their car plate numbers.
However, Kaprawi explained that the public was more comfortable with the simple prefix and numbering format (from 1 to 9999) that was used before September 2013. According to him, the current sequence was not popular with the crowd.
He said:
This is based on massive decline in bidding for the current KL number plate sequence. So I hope with ‘V’, it will get people excited.
The tender bidding notice for Putrajaya will be issued at the end of May by the RTD while the notice for Kuala Lumpur will be released after Hari Raya. The new series will be introduced as part of the effort to encourage car owners to bid for golden numbers (1 digit), fancy numbers (2 digits), and popular numbers (4 digits).
The minister is also hoping that the “F 1” number plate will cause a bidding frenzy. “I think many Ferrari owners will be queuing up to bid for the single alphabet of ‘F’ (number plate),” said Aziz jokingly.
The highest bidding price in Malaysia for a number plate was for “WWW1”. RM520,000 was offered by the Sultan of Johor, Sultan Ibrahim Almarhum Sultan Iskandar, in May 2012.
As of Wednesday (18th May), the latest registration number for Kuala Lumpur was WC 3974 V.
Source: The Sun Daily.
