The concerns about the recent ruling by the National Environment Agency (NEA) on the mandatory deregistration of older motorcycles go beyond issues of sentiment (Owners get incentives to deregister older, more pollutive motorcycles; April 7).

There are other wide-ranging repercussions as well.

First, these motorcycles are the main clientele for many workshops here. With their main source of income gone, one can only wonder how these workshops will survive.

They will likely increase the prices of services and products to cope, resulting in the overall cost of business going up.

Second, owners of motorcycles that are to be deregistered may decide to forego their maintenance routine as the machines are going to be scrapped anyway. This would inevitably result in a safety issue.

Third, due to the high certificate of entitlement prices, the $3,500 incentive payout may not be enough for owners to buy a replacement motorcycle.

It is wishful thinking to imagine that dealers will not adjust their prices across all models to make up for the loss of revenue from higher-capacity motorcycles affected by the changes to the additional registration fee.

The NEA and Land Transport Authority must consider all these factors when implementing the new ruling.

Joseph K. Tan