Review motor vehicle inspection timeline
My attention was caught by a story in Daily Monitor of January 4 titled, ‘All cars to be checked by June 2017-Ministry of Works’.
The story indicated that the vehicle inspection contract was granted to SGS, and is already running with inspections of an average of 50 Vehicles per day. The capacity of their inspection centre is indicated to be 200 vehicles at maximum capacity. On reading further, I was made to understand that one centre is so far operational, with the other three in progress of being set up. However, the story indicated that within six months all vehicles will have been checked/inspected short of which the police will swing into action to charge the vehicle owners that would not have had their vehicles inspected.
This sent me asking a number of questions about this arrangement and the planning around it. Reading from one of the reports available online, I gather that the setup of the inspection centres should have been completed by September last year (2016) including some mobile centres.
That notwithstanding, considering the vehicle population estimates and the capacity of inspection centres, I wonder how all vehicles if they were to be availed, can be inspected within six months.
Allow me to use some layman mathematics.
Let us say we currently have 800,000 vehicles as the lowest estimate (from report estimate), and the current operational inspection centre checks 200 vehicles per day at full capacity. It would require 4,000 days to check all the 800,000 vehicles, which 4,000 days is about 11 years. Even if the four centres were fully operational and at the same maximum capacity utilisation, we would still have the 800,000 vehicles inspected in not less than 2.5 years.
I can foresee after June 2017, the traffic police embarking on charging motorists who would not have had their vehicles inspected, not considering this reality that even if the person wanted their vehicle inspected, the inspection capacity issues would not permit.
The question on my mind is; who planned this and set the timelines? Did they have plans before planning or did they just make assumptions? As the report indicates, if the motor vehicle population is not known, how then can someone plan for the unknown? I challenge the concerned power centres to review this and if other plans are in place, yet to be available in the public domain, be availed and guide the population timely. Otherwise we await a crisis come July. I need to emphasise that I gladly support efforts to streamline our transport sector and any efforts in this line is commendable.
Yosamu Barekye,[email protected]
