By: Zandile Majavu
The African Panel Beaters Motor Mechanics Association (APMMA) remains at loggerheads with the police regarding the slashing of a contract with independent workshops due to dragged-out maintenance timeframes. The SAPS issued a directive in January to WesBank to only assign vehicles that needed repairs to local dealerships that were Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM).
WesBank national contract head of fleet maintenance, Marcellus Mbanda, said this followed certain delays from the small business workshops in fixing the police vehicles. APMMA CEO Sisa Mbangxa told Vutivi News that they recently had a meeting with WesBank. It assured the association that they were in talks with SAPS to reverse the decision to only use OEM dealerships.
“We agreed that the individual workshops that have the problem or [are] problematic, be identified. Then a solution must be crafted as to how to assist those individual merchants using the WesBank Merchant Development Plan. “We are also in talks with the Department of Small Business Development to intervene in ensuring that our member merchants are supported through their agencies, such as SEFA and SEDA,” said Mbangxa.
Mbanda said the challenges primarily revolved around the prolonged unavailability of vehicles following delays in the repair process, which significantly impacted the police’s operational efficiency. “The RT46 is a transversal contract in terms of which the National Treasury appoints five contractors to provide various vehicle fleet management services to the State. WesBank manages the maintenance services of the contract,” Mbanda explained.
SAPS national spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe told Vutivi News: “A few years ago, we entered into a service level agreement with WesBank to repair and maintain 48,000 vehicles that are distributed across the country to allow our members to respond to community complaints. But over the years, we have noticed the repairing and maintenance are taking longer than the service level agreements.”
They had agreed that merchants must repair and maintain the vehicles for no longer than 30 days. “Upon realisation, we continued to engage with WesBank to urge the merchants to improve and enhance the turnaround time for repairing and maintaining our vehicles. We did not just wake up and use OEMs. It was due to the challenges that we are experiencing. Since the 12th of January, we have had vehicles that are still in garages at merchants,” she said.
Mbangxa explained that there were around 8500 merchants participating in the contract, with each employing around 10 or more people on average. SMMEs stood to lose about R450 million. He explained that whenever there was a repair job to be outsourced, the SAPS transport officer would log a call at WesBank. The company then allocated a job to a workshop that was within a specified radius of the SAPS garage concerned. The member merchant would then tow the vehicle to the workshop.
“After the vehicle has been successfully inspected and the quotation accepted, WesBank would then send the merchant quotation to the SAPS for clearance. It is mostly where the merchants encounter a lot of delays. “At times, we wait for more than three months to receive repair authorisations from WesBank. Merchants would phone WesBank on a daily basis to check for authorisations and WesBank would tell them that they were still waiting for clearance from the SAPS,” Mbangxa said.
In addition to SAPS not paying for the storage of the vehicles, Mbangxa said that the merchants had to pay for security to look after the vehicles. If they found anything missing in the vehicles, a merchant must pay, although the vehicle remained at a workshop for an unreasonable period due to delays by WesBank and SAPS, Mbangxa said.
