Cost of inspecting private cars should be Sh136 only!

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

17 July 2022

When I read the report that the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) is going to start roadworthiness inspections on private cars older than four years, wondered whether the NTSA has the capacity to do this. I also wondered how much should be a fair cost to motorists.

To answer the first question, we need to find out the number of cars to be inspected. Unfortunately, there is no central register of the number of cars in use in Kenya! NTSA maintains a record of all those registered, but it does not have a way of ascertaining if the cars are in use.

Thus, the best we can do is make an estimate looking at the registration sequence and estimating the average lifespan of a car. The last time did this estimation was in 2014 and I found that there were about on million cars at the time (see details in the article of 28th December 2014).

If we allow about 10 per cent annual growth in the numbers, we find that there should be about 2 million cars in use regular currently and nearly all of them are more than four years old.

NTSA has not published a checklist of the items to be inspected, but I estimate that a fairly good inspection should last about 30 minutes per vehicle. Thus, in a six-hour working day, one inspector should check about 12 cars. At that rate, the inspector will process about 2,760 cars in one year (about 230 working days).

This means that, to inspect all the 2 million cars on the road in one year, NTSA would need to add at least 725 motor vehicle inspectors to its current staff. The final question is about the inspection cost per car.

I estimate their salary to be about Sh25,000 per month, or Sh300,000 per year (inspectors are trained mechanics with diploma qualifications; not university graduate engineers). We may add about 25 per cent to this amount to cater for the cost of tools and equipment. Thus, the total cost of inspecting 2,760 cars comes to Sh375,000, or just Sh136 only.

Media reports indicate that NTSA will be charging between Sh2,000 and Sh3,000 per car. Such a charge is simply unjustifiably high. We must not forget that NTSA is not profit-making institution. It is a public service institution and, as such, it should never charge more that the cost of the service provided.