THE state of garages and vehicle repair services in the country leave a lot to be desired, with most of them sending vehicle owners and drivers to their early graves.
Manned by mechanics with questionable competences, the sector is uncontrolled, unprofessional and unsafe as Tom, Dick and Harry can wake up and one day declare himself a mechanic.
A quick survey by the ‘Sunday News’ unearthed a sorry state of affairs as most of the so called garages dotted around the city of Dar es Salaam and other parts of the country are a mere shadow of professional garages.
Some of the mechanics operate on street corners, others under trees, while some can be seen occupying open spaces that are passed for garages.
To add salt to an injury, most of the mechanics have not received formal training.
The majority are recruited as spanner boys and as they gain experience, they then rise to become trusted mechanics at their points of work or they move on to open their own garages.
Then vehicle owners have to worry of where they take their cars for repairs.
According to the Statistics on the Status of Crimes and Road Safety (January to December 2017) report, 7.7 per cent of road crashes on Tanzanian roads were due to mechanical faults.
The report goes on to say that 2,075 people died and 6,169 were injured in road related crashes the same year.
Commenting on the state of garages in the country, the Head of Mechanical Engineering Department at the Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) Dr Ramadhan Kivugo told the ‘Sunday News’ in an exclusive interview that there is almost no garage in a real sense.
He said that even if they are there, they are very few; passenger and privately owned vehicles never undergo checkups and repairs, but only have some smaller parts complained about by the drivers fixed.
The mechanical engineering expert went on to highlight the way the country’s artisanal mechanics are attained and their working environment as a cause of deadly crashes.
“In most parts of the country, a garage is just somewhere under a tree shade by the roadside, manned by a person whether trained or untrained. He works as an artisanal mechanic as long as he can loosen or tighten some parts of the car or lug nuts,” he added.
He went on to say that even those who are working in a workshop passed for a garage, what is being done is not vehicle checkup and repairing in a real sense, but mere attending to drivers’ complaints.
Dr Kivugo highlighted that if a driver complains of faulty brakes, all that is done is to tighten the brakes without checking other causative factors which after a short distance, may lead to crashes.
For him, most of the crashes in the name of human error (accounting for over 85 per cent of total crashes recorded in Tanzania in 2017), mechanical faults and environmental conditions basically originate from substandard repairs by unqualified and unmonitored mechanics.
“Unbalanced wheels lead to pitching and deflecting vehicles when in motion, which subsequently changes driving habits when vehicles are on the road, and its impact is fatal crashes which may involve other cars and innocent road users like pedestrians. Also, faulty braking system due to unprofessional repair ends up leading vehicles to swaying or bumping into other cars or road users,” he said.
One such incident that quickly comes into mind is that which resulted in the death of three pedestrians in Morogoro after a passing truck’s front tyre came off, hitting the victims to death.
Others being reported regularly include those causing the cars to plunge into ravines or colliding with other vehicles caused by wheels coming off or tyre bursts.
On this, Dr Kivugo said that the causatives are due to incompetent mechanics that repair flat tyres or check tyre pressure.
He said that the mechanics, due to the little knowledge they have or minimal supervisor, fasten lug nuts with little or too much torque.
Some are not well tightened, which causes tyres to come off or swerve. He said that pressurizing the tyre above average leads to braking failure or tyre bursts, which cause fatal crashes.
“Artisanal mechanics simply fill the pressure per the driver’s requirements. They don’t consider the needed pressure or set standards and the weight of the loaded consignment. This causes the brake system to misbehave, not working properly and also causes tyre bursts, for which the mechanics who repaired it must be answerable,” Dr Kivugo said.
When reached for comment, the Head Traffic Police Department, Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police (SACP) Fortunatus Musilimu, said that his duty was to ensure that all vehicles moving on the roads are mechanically sound.
“Our duty is to make sure that vehicles are in good condition and have all the needed accessories. The garage and mechanics issues are not part of our enforcement. But, we are always vigilant all the time to ensure road safety is taken into account,” he said.
The Director General of Land Transport Regulatory Authority (LATRA), Mr Gilliard Ngewe, conceded that the methods of inspecting auto mechanics personnel and garages in the country leave a lot to be desired.
He said that the LATRA Act of 2019, Section 5, directs mandatory inspection not only of vehicles, but also of garages and type of mechanics involved in repairing the vehicles.
“Currently, the regulations are being formulated by the Attorney General’s Office. When completed, LATRA will change licence conditions to strictly involve important aspects like the people who repair the vehicles. Therefore, we expect to put regulatory framework of certifying the garages, the mechanics used as conditions for transporting licence issuance,” he said.
This is contrary to what is happening now,where in most areas, trucks and small vehicles are serviced under tree shades or any other funny spot where there are no proper facilities for the job.
Dr Kivugo, however, highlighted that danger is imminent for such makeshift types of garages or repair centres. For those under a tree, the DIT lecturer said that a vehicle may easily trip off the jack and kill the technician working under it.
Also, children playing around and other road users are endangered. He went on to explain that for those garages that are in some buildings, safety precautions were not taken into consideration, which puts workers’ lives at stake.
