The Chief Executive of AON Botswana, a short term insurance company has called on government to consider a law reform that would make it mandatory for all cars travelling on Bo0tswana roads to be insured. Thapelo Matsheka said in an interview that 70 percent, possibly more of cars in Botswana currently not insured. This he said posed a serious risk and unnecessary cost to other road users of insured vehicle. He said premiums would significantly go down if the pool cars of was to be raised by a mandatory legal requirement to insure the vehicles. “It cannot be right that we still do not have mandatory insurance for vehicles.
Such a reform would significantly reduce rates as the pool would go up,” said Dr. Matsheka in an interview with Sunday Standard. He said the current scenario where so many cars are not insured makes recovery of costs from third parties almost impossible in cases of accidents. “Given the high number of imports [Di fong kong] flooding the market we have seen the number of accidents in our roads stretching policy holders,” said Dr. Matsheka.
He said the situation is made all the worse by the fact that many of the drivers are inexperienced. “What we see is that every time somebody hits another they start to do a deal. That is not good for insurance. We need reforms. The caveat is that we cannot have so many cars in a country not being insured. Even the government is losing out,” said Dr Matsheka.
