Mbabane- Principal Secretary in the ministry of Public Works and Transport Mkhaliphi says he is in the process of cleaning up service providers data to ensure that government vehicles are maintained in regularly checked and appropriately checked garages.
Mkhaliphi was responding on allegations of corrupt practices unveiled by Independent News at government’s main garage, Central Transport Administration commonly known as CTA in Mbabane. This publication recently revealed how government cars were illegally moved from CTA to a makeshift garage, where some were illegally sold to the public and some were stripped off parts to be sold.
Mkhaliphi said the main purpose of engaging private garages by government was to get specialised services that are not available at CTA workshop and avoiding pile-up of vehicles that are desperately needed for service delivery to the public. He confirmed that his ministry has sought help from the police and is expecting the law to take its course.
“We are however in a process to clean-up our service provider data to ensure that vehicles are maintained in regularly appropriately accredited garages. This is an ongoing process.” Mkhaliphi said.
He further acknowledged that there was a possible breach of administrative processes at CTA which led to some vehicles being stolen and stripped in some private garage as exposed by this publication. The PS said his ministry is working on the matter with the help of the police.
“Information given to me refers to possible breach of administrative processes, which I will certainly address with the department. I will wait for the police to complete their investigation. ” Mkhaliphi said.
When asked how the private garages were granted authority to fix government vehicles, Mkhaliphi said there is a team that processes accreditation and gets the garages on a vendor list. He said once the team is done with the accreditation processes, it is then submitted to the General Transport Manager for final approval.
Senior Inspector at CTA Mbabane depot, Mabandla Dladla refuted the PS’s statement that vetting the private garages always go through the relevant team. Dladla said there are private garages that were never assessed by him and his team but only learnt about them when they were given government jobs.
“PS is not being honest with the truth because there are garages that we get to know of when they are already being given jobs to do. Some of us are not being liked because we enquire about such things that are not done using the right protocol. ” Explained Dladla.
Dladla wondered how the PS will go about the clean-up process when the truth and right protocol are being ignored and bypassed. He added that most of the rot at CTA is known to the superiors but are intentionally ignored,for reasons best known to them. Dladla said it’s sad that the superiors are watching as CTA is made a milking cow by selfish people.
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