Abstract:
Governments, are entrusted to actively promote and maintain the welfare of their people, and the Namibian Government is no exception. Governments go about promoting the well-being of their people by using many policies within their many respective arms of governance.
It can be argued that in order for Governments to carry out their work, they need to move from point to point. According to Sperling and Salon (2002) ‘Enhanced mobility has many positive effects on economic development and social welfare, including more efficient movement of goods and improved access to jobs, health services, and education’.
The Government-Garage is the custodian of Government road transport services; tasked with the responsibility of the acquisition of fleets; parts of or any fleet component, taxing, licencing, fuelling, repairs and maintenance of all Government fleets, on behalf of the Offices, Ministries and Agencies (OMA) centrally and reclaiming all funds spent on public entities transport needs from the respective OMA.
The purpose of the study was to evaluate the general operational performance of Government-Garage. The study focused on the service level given to its customers in terms of fleet provision - capacities, cost implications and fleet specification, as well as to make appropriate recommendations for improvement.
It was found that Government-Garage transport service provision is effective as their objective of providing vehicles to the OMA were met. In fact, they provided more vehicles to OMA than needed. However, the study showed that Government-Garages are not operating efficiently; the study confirmed that on many grounds, there was a wastage of resources and complex procedures. A few recommendations are a) to appoint council members, to implement and regulate policies b) A ‘Fleet Management Task Force’, to review the utilization data to specifically examine the use for each day of the week, and to review the number of vehicles needed per OMA with the purpose of eliminating waste.
