The ways in which the Knesset supervises the government includes approval by Knesset committees of regulations drawn up by ministers. This is not a new invention in the current Knesset, but all the same it looks as though the Ministry of Transport was surprised to find that the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee refuses to be a rubber stamp for the decision by Minister of Transport Merav Michaeli to cancel the regulation requiring parents to fit systems to their cars that will prevent children being left behind in them. Almost every summer, there are cases in Israel of babies and young children dying after being forgotten in cars left in the heat.
The committee's decision has created the absurd situation in which the regulation is in force, parents who did not fit the required system in their vehicles by March 1 are in breach of the law, but the Ministry of Internal Security, which is headed by a minister from Michaeli's Labor Party, is refraining from enforcement. Yesterday, a further session of the Economic Affairs Committee on the matter ended without agreement, and the regulation remains valid.
At the end of the session, committee chairperson MK Michael Biton decided not to hold a vote on cancelling the regulation, after deputy director general of the Ministry of Transport Avner Flor, commenting on the requirement to procure systems, said, "Procurement is not on the agenda." Following this, Biton closed the session, saying, "The regulation is in force. May God preserve our babies. I hope that the government will come to its senses and draw up a plan that will protect our babies in the coming summer." Biton pointed out that in the past year the committee had held several sessions on the matter, in which it had deferred the date in which the regulation would come into force to March 2022.
In previous committee discussions in which the minister announced her intention of canceling the obligation to install warning systems, the committee asked her to find alternative solutions. The solutions proposed by the ministry, however, mainly consisted of advertising campaigns, and Biton, together with the chairperson of the Subcommittee on Road Safety Boaz Toporovsky, rejected them out of hand. The two demanded a pilot program for procuring systems to be carried out over the next year, but, as mentioned, the Ministry of Transport is not prepared to contemplate solutions that include testing these systems.
"We said that we would cancel if we saw a substantial move on the part of the government on saving children forgotten in cars. After that, the government did something unconscionable, and decided to cancel the regulation. This is not in its power, and has no validity. It's as though the government were to announce the repeal of a law; it can announce it, but the power to do that lies with the Knesset," Biton said yesterday.
Flor told the committee that his ministry was subsidizing installation of the systems in question in new vehicles, since those systems were "technologically mature", but that there was no international standard for retrofitting in older vehicles, and that this had not been proven to be effective.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 7, 2022.
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