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Chinese Buses on the brink
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot
September 03, 2009
A Daily Graphic feature of September 2, 2009, claimed that 400
Metro Mass Transit (MMT) buses “were down and out.”
The Managing Director of the (MMT), Mr. Henk Visschers, instead of
hiding in shame, came out the same day in a bold voice to
correct the count.
Mr. Visschers said that not all the “400 MMT buses, delivered from
China to the Ministry of Roads and Transport in 2006, have been
grounded.”
The correct number of actual broken-down buses, he said, was not
400. It was 344
buses that were down as if the difference mattered for the
problem on hand.
The number of down busses, he implied, was not even the worse part
of the problem.
Mr. Visschers wanted us to know that the trouble was the
“unavailability of spare parts and trained mechanics to repair
the defective buses.”
So, 400 buses were purchased from China with no fore-thought of
spare parts and trained personnel to maintain the buses!
But wait till you hear the solution he had in mind.
The management team at MMT wished “to dispose the buses to
individuals and interested organizations” and to use the
proceeds to procure newer buses.
Now, why do I have the feeling that there is something very wrong
with the solution proposed and how do we assure ourselves that
the same broken fate will not befall the new buses to be
procured?
But wait. Mr. Visschers had an excuse for the ridiculous
problem: The core
reason was that the Chinese buses arrived with no maintenance
manual in English.
So who placed the order and took delivery of the buses, if it
wasn’t the same MMT organization and how are we expected to know
what they are doing?
No requirements were made before the acquisition of a manual in
English form the last time.
And on delivery of the busses to MMT, no questions were
asked either about manuals.
With the usual Ghanaian attitude of
“gifts from the gods,” the busses were accepted, even
though it was our money that made the purchase.
But, I suspect the answer from MMT would be to ask not to worry.
The Chinese are good people, generous, and have the same
attitude towards things purchased with hard cash as they are
with gifts they send out!
So, why would anyone bother “to look a gift horse in the mouth”
anyway even if they turn out to be buses paid with hard cash?
The Chinese, I think, would still have an excuse, even if it was a
purchase and not a gift.
Those brands of broken buses in Ghana are the same buses used in
China. Moreover, the
Chinese manufacture for the world market.
Many of the same buses in Ghana can be assumed to be in
service in other parts of Africa.
These buses are still running since no other country is
complaining about them.
Transportation companies do demand durable buses.
They know about the value of brands.
One can, therefore, expect that those using the Chinese
buses had done due diligence search and know the worth of the
buses before the purchase unless only MMT from Ghana was
selected for duping from the list of potential clients.
However, to have 344 buses of the same brand, out of a batch of
400, breakdown suddenly in Ghana ought to suggest that something
else went wrong. And this
mistake cannot be blamed on missing manuals.
The fault may lie in negligence and our lack of proper maintenance
culture.
Even so, and within this maintenance-free culture, it is highly
improbable to think that 344 Chinese buses broke down within a
probable span of two years in use and there was no mechanic in
Ghana who could fix one out of them.
Out of the 400, we must assume that 14% is on the road, being
maintained and serviced by technicians who cannot read Chinese,
even if they had the manuals.
And Mr. Visschers showed no indication that the MMT organization
had contacted the Chinese Embassy for help to translate the
manual to aid proper maintenance schedule for the remaining
buses.
The only contact with a Chinese was “somewhere between September
last year and March this year when the Chinese came down, and
the problem was discovered as "engineering application
problems.”
“Engineering application problems” for all 344 buses purchased and
the Chinese engineers didn’t do anything else after the
“discovery” but went back to China!.
Another odd episode was that Mr. Visschers couldn’t pin down the
exact date of the visit.
Not even within a week, he couldn’t do it.
He had to use six months.
And neither could his secretary help him with the exact
date of the visit from the official logbook.
How are we supposed to believe that Mr. Visschers is a good
manager?
No wonder MMT could run the buses for two years without concern for
a critical document such as maintenance manuals in English!
So much for competence in Ghanaian administrators like
Visschers.
Coincidentally during the same time, Visschers was making his lame
excuses, I heard on another radio a man who described himself as
the secretary of a group of roadside repair shops that had
offered to repair the broken-down Chinese buses.
What this man on the radio said about the repairs brought me some
hope. His offer was
heartwarming, intelligent, and patriotic, especially in the "can
do" attitude department.
The man debunked the excuse some make for “specialty vehicle” anytime
imported machines breakdown in Ghana.
I heard the same “special vehicle” excuse in Ghana many years ago.
Russian tractors were brought to Ghana.
They were said after a while of use to have broken down.
And the “special vehicle” pretext came up because they
thought the tractors were snow plows.
Snowplow or tractors are vehicles driven by the same mechanical
principles as all tractors.
It would have taken little imagination to have figured
this out.
Fortunately, a young Ghanaian engineer at the time figured this
out.
The representative of our local street-side engineers had the same
attitude towards the broken-down MMT Chinese buses.
Any automobile that was manufactured for use anywhere in
the world ought to be able to be operated and maintained
successfully in Ghana, he said.
Of course, by "automobile," he was not referring to the yellow
Lamborghini (sport car, low profile with the bottom of the car
scrapping some three inches off the ground) that I saw parked in
front of a hotel in Accra this last Saturday).
The man was referring to sensible utility vehicles like the
broken-down Chinese buses.
He then offered a challenge to the government and the management
team at MMT.
He said, “give us one of those buses each - one to Kumasi Magazine
and another to Abosokai (and some other place name that has
escaped my mind) and see if we can’t fix it; manual or no
manual.”
Knowing the reputation of the folks at Magazine and the Abosokai
shops, there was no doubt in my mind that the repairs could be
done there. These
street-side mechanics who never sat in a classroom, nor read a
sentence in English, I am certain, could fix these busses.
Three out of 344 idle buses were all he asked for.
The challenge is whether we are prepared to give Ghanaian
ingenuity a chance and a trial.
It is worth the trial. Give them the chance, I say.
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC,
September 03, 2009
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