Works ministry sells 190 vehicles for N$15 million

THE Ministry of Works and Transport has auctioned off 190 vehicles from government garages for about N$15 million.

Acting head of government garages Sam Kadhikwa confirmed this earlier this week.

He said the auctions are in line with minister of works and transport Veikko Nekundi’s directive in April that all government garages must submit a list of inventory, with the aim of clearing out ageing fleets in three months.

“Thus far from the auction we conducted during the financial year, we have sold 190 vehicles on auction from the government garages, which generated about N$15 million.

“We are still continuing with the process of technical reports, assessing which vehicles should be sold or kept,” Kadhikwa said.

He said the process is tedious and lengthy.

Once a technical report is completed, it is referred to the ministry’s executive director, and then to the treasury in the Ministry of Finance to obtain approval for such vehicles to be disposed of via auctioning.

Another challenging factor he highlighted was that the ministry only has two teams that are qualified to conduct auctionings, who are all stationed in Windhoek, and have been dispatched across the country and hence the process takes time.

“We are disposing of [the vehicles] gradually, but . . . it is a process. We need to do things thoroughly, otherwise we will have a huge problem,” Kadhikwa cautioned.

He said auctions cannot take place without the treasury’s approval.

In 2023, the ministry auctioned off old, unused government vehicles, generating over N$105 million.

“Within two weeks of the staff address, the garage must submit to my office a list of all redundant cars at the government garages countrywide,” Nekundi told The Namibian in April.

At the time, he said the government was not in the business of selling cars, therefore making a profit or loss was not relevant.

He said the ministry considers revenue to the fiscus, which will only be estimated once the number of vehicles have been established.

In April, economist Josef Sheehama said the minister should avoid being over-optimistic and making excuses for failing.

He believes Nekundi should concentrate on finding alternatives and reforming fleet management policy, optimising workflows and allocating resources as efficiently and economically as possible.

Last month, the ministry defended its decision to buy a new fleet of sport utility vehicles for N$26 million to avoid the high cost of servicing old cars.

It said the current vehicle fleet had aged, and maintaining it is expensive.

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