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Licensing garages will bring sanity to industry
Licensing garages, bring sanity to industry, National Road Safety Council,
This week, ministry of Transport said it had started sensitising stakeholders about the new traffic and road safety regulations government introduced for enforcement starting next Financial Year.
Under the new Act, the Transport Licensing Board and the National Road Safety Council have been disbanded, giving more powers to the Transport Regulation and Safety Department to shorten the time for decision making during law enforcement, jointly with the police.
Other new laws include registration of all motor garages and driving schools, which is a welcome move.
Many urban centres in Uganda are filled with garages, some of which are run by unqualified people.
For long we have depended on word of mouth, instinct and sometimes mere availability in choosing what garages we take our cars to.
Which is a big gamble, one that at times end in fatalities. It is not uncommon for motorists to complain of new faults emerging after previously visiting a garage.
Sometimes these faults are minor, for instance, placing a bulb wrongly, to more dangerous ones such as replacing the car breaks wrongly.
Many of these garages are run by ‘senior mechanics’ who employ young boys, with little or no training, to learn on the job.
Their job is usually to tear apart the car and later assemble it. Many times you hear the supervisor screaming at them for performing their task wrongly. Sometimes these mistakes are deadly if they go unnoticed.
Also, the so many unregulated garages have turned into dens of thieves. Usually if not sold in whole in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan or Kenya, stolen cars are hidden in garages within from where they are dismantled and sold as spare parts.
So for government to finally come out and say garages will be regulated is good news.
Like other professions and businesses are regulated to create a sense of organisation and accountability, the concern of anyone, like Transport minister Gen Edward Katumba Wamala rightly put it, setting up a garage under every tree has to come to a stop.
We need to know who owns these garages, who operates them and it they are qualified to do so, and most importantly, be able to hold people to account in case things go wrong.
