As many as 84,000 cars in Cyprus may be affected by forthcoming recalls the government is set to announce over faulty airbags, Transport Minister Alexis Vafeades said on Wednesday.

Speaking to the Cyprus Mail, he explained that the figure for now remains an estimate and subject to reassessments as more information becomes available, given that some car importers have as yet not submitted exact figures to the government.

“This figure may be an overestimation or an underestimation, and this figure will continue to develop over time as more information becomes available to us,” he said.

He also offered an update on the planned decrees he will issue that cars fitted with faulty airbags be recalled, saying the matter is being studied by the legal service.

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“There are a number of matters, including procedural matters, which are being looked through, and when that process is completed, we will go ahead with the recall process,” he said.

He added that he will inform parliament on Thursday of the latest state of the process regarding recalls, and said further developments would follow as and when the legal service’s study is complete.

The announcement of the figure came after a behind-closed-doors House transport committee meeting had taken place on Tuesday.

After that meeting, Dipa MP Marinos Mousiouttas said the initially devised recall procedure “did not develop as planned because the response from importers was not what we expected”.

He later added that importing companies “did not respond adequately” when called upon to alert drivers of cars equipped with faulty airbags of the potential danger.

The issue of faulty airbags centres around products manufactured by company Takata.

Takata airbags suffer a fault related to exposure to high levels of heat or humidity, with which means they have a tendency to explode when released under such circumstances.

This explosion shoots the airbag’s metal inflator outwards and in the direction of the person it was designed to protect, potentially causing further injuries or, in some cases, death.

The issue of faulty Takata airbags has been ongoing for over two years, with it believed that the death of 24-year-old Kyriakos Oxynos in January 2023 was caused in part by a faulty airbag.

More recently, it is now believed that the death of 19-year-old Styliani Giorgalli in October may have been caused by a faulty Takata airbag.

Vafeades had said earlier in the month he was preparing decrees to order that vehicles equipped with faulty airbags be recalled, saying they would be published “pending the opinion of the legal service”, and that the decrees will “concern the management of the entire situation”.

This, he said, will include “among other things, the identification of vehicles which are subject to recalls, how the recall will proceed, what the risk assessment will be, and, based on the risk assessment, what actions people should take”.

“With the decrees, we want to cover all the issues which will arise from the situation and which we will manage, not only how we will handle the legislation. The approach will be comprehensive,” he said.

Asked by the Cyprus Mail earlier this month to explain the situation regarding present and future recalls and the possibility of cars being blocked from undergoing MOT inspections, he said there will be “no hard and fast rule” on how these decisions will be made.

“Decisions over whether some models will be immobilised, or whether they will not be able to undergo MOT inspections, or even over whether they will be recalled, cannot fall under a one-size-fits-all policy. The decrees will be specialised, and they will depend on each vehicle’s circumstances,” he said.

He referenced a similar situation in Australia, wherein “they studied the data, conducted risk assessments, and in the end decided to recall vehicles which had just one type of Takata airbag”.

To this end, he said, his ministry would issue specific decrees on an ad hoc basis, rather than catch-all recalls.

Parliament had in December approved a law which allows Vafeades to issue decrees to recall defective vehicles in light of recent issues with faulty airbags.

The law also allows him to unilaterally set the time period for measures to be taken for defective vehicles to be repaired, and for the suspension of MOT certificates for vehicles which contain defective or unsuitable components.