NO MORE TAKING GOVT CARS HOME

MBABANE – The new government has indeed lived up to His Majesty’s directive; that of taking hard decisions. In a bid to revive the economy, the Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini-led government long started implementing and enforcing certain policies to ensure maximum saving within government.

The policy, that has seemed to inconvenience government drivers, is that of mandatory parking of government vehicles within government premises after they knock off from work, which is around 4:30pm.
In his Speech from the Throne, the King emphasised that hard decisions had to be taken, sacrifices needed to be made and conventional methods to curb expenditure had to be pursued.
The call for cars to remain behind while drivers went home was made a couple of weeks after the new government started duties late last year.

This was first attested to by some government drivers who were used to driving home with the vehicles that their employer assigned to them for work-related use during working hours.

Narrated

The drivers narrated to this reporter how an ‘order’ to leave the cars at work when they leave to their respective homes has rubbed them the wrong way.
“The new government has spoken. We were told to leave the cars at work and not to take them to our respective places of abode like we did before,” said an affected driver.
This particular driver said in the few months that preceded the announcement, he was driving a foreign-registered govern- ment vehicle but now he has to walk home after parking the car.

During the interview, he was in the company of another driver who had also left his car at the office.
A transport officer, who requested to speak on condition of anonymity, confirmed that he conveyed the message after a reminder was circulated.
He said: “Actually, it’s not like all along we were lax in doing our job by letting some drivers go home with the cars but some circumstances called for that.”

The officer made an example that sometimes employees would work until late and require transportation when they knocked off.
He said it was only logical to allow that driver to transport those officers home after work and then keep the car with him overnight than to drive to the office to park it because that would also render him stranded at night.
Secured
Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Public Works and Transport Makhosini Mndawe said it was a good thing that government workers after works, should leave cars at the designated place, in this case being the government offices where they will be safe and secured.
“The law has never allowed drivers to take cars home but since you know that rules are there to be broken, some people were taking them home. We are grateful that the new government reminded us about this when it came into office.”
When asked if there was an improvement in terms of conforming to the policies governing car usage, the PS said there was bound to be.
After the abuse of government cars became rife, in 2017 the Ministry of Public Works and Transport presented Road Traffic Regulations for approval by Parliament.
These contained 19 offences including that people who knowingly used the government vehicles for non-work related purposes would be fined E1 500.
In a period two years, in 2015 and 2017, government coffers received over E165 000 in fines from drivers who were nabbed misusing government vehicles.
There were over 800 cars that were nabbed during this period.

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