30 Mar 2017

 Despite 449 government vehicles in Ghanzi District, there is only one private garage approved to cater for their service.
This is a worrying situation,principal technical officer at Central Transport Organisation (CTO) Mr Aron Chinga  said in an interview with BOPA.

Mr Chinga said CTO, a government department  mandated to take  care of all government vehicles approved only one private garage to offer servicing of the government fleet,adding that it was worrying that the garage was not able to do all range of maintenance.
Mr Chinga lamented that this came at a cost to government. ‘You have to take into consideration all the costs of having a vehicle travel to Maun, Palapye or even Gaborone for attention.
The government is forced to fork out money for a driver’s wellbeing and then of course the fuel of the said car, sometimes for a minor repair issue that the only garage we have here cannot take care of’, said Mr  Chinga.
Mr Chinga explained that some garages did not meet specific requirements during the tendering process to outsource such services.

Mr  Chinga said although they were mandated to care for government vehicles his department only maintained 114 of the available 449 vehicles.
He noted that there was a worrying trend of government departments not to take their vehicles to CTO before except after a government vehicle has been serviced.
“It’s mandatory that before a car is taken for service it has to be brought to our workshop for assessment from our technical team to make recommendations on the kind of service the car really needs, even after service it has to be brought in for us to check if the service done is of acceptable standards but unfortunately that is not the case,” lamented Mr Chinga.

This,Mr  Chinga said leads to sometimes unnecessary expenditure as some garages exploit these departments because they would even service parts that do not require service in a move to over charge the same government department.
On other challenges, Mr  Chinga said anyone cleared to drive a government vehicle needed to familiarise themselves with the policies put in place in the use and care of government vehicles.
He noted that it had been observed that officers or drivers sometimes took government vehicles to carwashes that had not been accredited by his department.

‘Yes, even a car wash has to be accredited because we are dealing with government property here and we want those we entrust with it to be accountable,”Mr Chinga said.
Also,Mr Chinga said he was worried about the high number of accidents government vehicles were involved in within the district without divulging figures as he mentioned that even when a vehicle had been involved in an accident departments did  not usually report that to CTO.

He noted that measures had been put in place to address the issue of driver’s fitness to drive government vehicles as drivers were sent to training twice a year for upgrading purposes as well as defensive driving lessons. ENDS