The House of Representatives on Thursday decided to postpone a scheduled vote on new regulations governing the recall of car components, which would have set out what to do with the dangerous Takata airbags, an issue dominating the news over the past few weeks.

The matter would be revisited next week, although it was unclear what would happen, given that Thursday’s session of the House plenary was the last regular one of the year.

Due to the several amendments and tweaks introduced to the original bill, one of the legislation’s sponsors – Disy’s Nikos Sykas – proposed that MPs needed more time.

His proposal to postpone the vote prevailed, even though the other co-sponsors disagreed strongly.

Present in the House was the mother of the late Kyriakos Oxynos, a young man who in 2023 died after a car accident set off the defective airbag.

When deployed, the Takata airbag sends shards of metal flying. The component has been under recall for years.

The bill at the House would have spelled out procedures for removing from circulation those vehicles with Takata airbags, following their identification and the dispatch of a recall notice to the owner.

Earlier in the day, an importer had warned that replacing the faulty airbags could take years, given the large number of vehicles equipped with this component.

Alexis Anninos, managing director of the Cyprus Import Corporation, told CyBC the airbag replacement process could take years.

He said the matter ultimately hinges on work hours – and by extension staffing-at dealerships, no matter how quickly laws are passed to regulate the issue of recalls for faulty Takata airbags, or any other component.

“No dealership can process 50 replacements a day,” Anninos said, extrapolating from Wednesday’s statements by authorities and instructions to 11,181 car owners of Mazda Demios to “directly contact” the dealer.

“Overnight, the dealer is supposed to handle 11,000 plus phone calls, something no organisation in the country can do!” Anninos said.

Recalls are not a new phenomenon and had been happening on an ongoing basis for years, he said, adding that in other countries, like Germany, vehicles carrying faulty car components that have been prioritised as higher risk, are given an 18-month timeframe for replacement.

Anninos contrasted this with the three-month directive proposed for completing Takata airbag recalls in Cyprus (initially six months), which had been slated to start on January 1.

Tens of thousands of vehicles, by some estimates up to 80,000, are expected to require recall, while 60 per cent of the vehicle fleet in the country had been determined to be cars imported from third countries, which prolongs the hunt for information and thus component replacement procedures.

It would cause insurmountable problems with many cars being immobilised for months while awaiting replacement of problematic components, the association said.