21 Feb 2021

Government has 11 832 vehicles in its asset register and the figure excludes the yellow fleet, says Minister of Transport and Communications, Mr Thulagano Segokgo.

Mr Segokgo noted that government, through presidential directive CAB 9 (B)/2013 of 25 April 2013, took a decision to decentralise service and maintenance of government vehicles to individual ministries.

He explained that ministries budget for and maintain their fleet hence he could only account for vehicles in his ministry.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications, he said, had a fleet of 1 972 vehicles with 1 686 of them being in use while 286 were currently out of service due to breakdown, accidents, awaiting spare parts and boarding.

In the financial year 2020/21, he said government would only be purchasing 21 vehicles valued at P15.4 million under the development vote.

Minister Segokgo said the benefits of outright purchase versus leasing included but not limited to the creation of vehicle ownership by government, no monthly installments to pay, procurement of government vehicles at discounted prices thereby benefitting from economies of scale due to bulk purchases.

Other benefits, he said, were that proceeds from auction sales were always higher than the reserve price due to competitive bidding. “The proceeds are deposited into government coffers for the benefit of the entire nation,” he added.

Regarding leasing, Mr Segokgo said there were no repair costs associated with leasing, more variety in the choice of vehicles to use and vehicle insurance cover.

“Government is amenable to introducing an Uber-type transport model for discharge of its duties.

However, this model may have limitations such as its footprint across the country and its capacity in provision of specialised services (e.g. ambulances), availability of certain services as and when required,” he said.

Parliament was also informed that there was need to carefully undertake a thorough analysis to compare the Uber-type of operation with the current government way of doing business.

The model, said Mr Segokgo, also Member of Parliament for Tlokweng, would also require government to overhaul the entire fleet management system at a considerable cost.

“My ministry is considering to run a shuttle bus service between Gaborone and Francistown as a way of reducing travel costs across government,” he said.

Furthermore, he pointed out that government vehicles and transportation strategy encompassed policy, transport orders and procedures, budget, transport establishment review committee (TERC) and other services. Elaborating on the three core areas, he said the transport orders and procedures document was approved by Parliament and his ministry was using it to manage the government fleet.

The transport orders and procedures guides all government ministries in the management of the fleet, adding that it must be noted that the document was under review with 95 per cent of the work done in order to align it to the current fleet management dynamics.

On the budget area, he said, the Transport Establishment Review Committee (TERC) was a sub committee of the estimates committee in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, chaired by the permanent secretary, Ministry of Transport and Communications (MT&C) with members from Central Transport Organisation (CTO), Ministry of Finance and Economic Development as well as Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM).

“Its main responsibility is to establish government’s vehicle needs and submit a budget for the following financial year,” he said.

Other services mentioned by the minister included the short-term hires or pool services, assisting and advising ministries departments and agencies on maintenance of their vehicles and disposal of government vehicles through auction process.

The MP for Kanye North, Mr Thapelo Letsholo had wanted to know the number of vehicles government has, and how may were currently out of service, parked or non-functional due to breakdowns and lack of maintenance, including awaiting replacement parts.

MP Letsholo also asked the minister to state how many vehicles the government had, and at what value was government purchasing in the financial year 2020/21.

The minister was also requested to state the benefit of outright purchase of vehicles versus leasing and if government was amenable to introducing a Uber-type transport model for the discharge of its duties, especially in consideration of government’s constrained financial resources.ENDS