Times Of Swaziland: E40M DEFICIT AS GOVT HIRES 400 CARS

E40M DEFICIT AS GOVT HIRES 400 CARS
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 BY STANLEY KHUMALO on 26/11/2018 01:19:00


MBABANE – Government’s short term solutions are quite costly. The cost of
running external examinations this year has set government into a deficit of
about E40 million.
This amount was used to cater for the external examinations since the beginning
of October.
In haste, the Ministry of Education and Training roped in security personnel to
invigilate and transport external examination papers to various schools and
further submit them to various offices of Regional Education Officers (REOs) in
the country, daily.
This impromptu decision coerced government to rent 400 vehicles from Woodford
Car Hire. These cars were part of the 507 vehicles used during the National
Elections.
They were initially rented by the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) from
June 1 until September 30, 2018.
The 400 cars were rented at E660 000 per day.
This follows that each car cost the taxpayer E1 650 per day just to be under the
authority of government. The vehicles were with the Ministry of Education and
Training for 46 days. This is so, as external examinations started on October 1,
2018. The vehicles were returned to the car hire service provider on November
19, 2018.
For this period, government will pay E30 360 000.
Most of the cars that were rented by the EBC during the elections were Isuzu
double cab bakkies. According to auto trader, a car dealership website, the
vehicles have a capacity of 80 litres of fuel.
A litre of diesel retails at about E12.86 which translates to E 1 028.95 per
full tank. On average, each car was fuelled twice a week. This means that about
E6 585 292.80 was spent on fuel over the 46 days.
Further, government spent E2 484 000 on refreshments. The refreshments were
offered to security personnel who were manning schools during the external
examinations.