By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The Sierra Leone Road Transport Corporation (SLRTC) looks set to branch into haulage as part of the parastatal’s plan to diversify its operations. The management of the Corporation says the shift is also part of its desire to increase its revenue base.
The revelation was made at the ongoing national budget presentation hearings in Freetown.
“We are thinking about going into haulage and even owning warehouse facilities. We currently own a warehouse which CRS is using, and we are getting some revenue from there,” Mohamed Tejan Kellah, Finance Manager of the national public transportation provider, said in a presentation or the second day of the hearing which is taking place at the Miatta Conference Center in Freetown.
The annual budget discussion forum is a pre-requisite for the preparation of the following year’s national budget. All government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) are expected to present and defend their budget in front of relevant officials of the Ministry of Finance and the general public for subsequent approval.
SLRTC was among the first MDAs to make their presentation for the 2020 budget. The Corporation is forecasting over Le28 billion of generated revenue in 2020, a 64% increase from the current year’s projections.
Deputy Managing Director of SLRTC, Paul Tucker told Politico after the presentation that they were already in advance stages of their ‘diversification’ drive.
“We have gone far, the private investors are even here. We have three groups now. But what we want to do now is to know the sharing profitability; what will come to us and what will go to the investor, what will be the necessary infrastructures to set up,” he said on the sidelines of the discussions.
Whiles making a case for the productivity of these plans, Tucker added that they can do more and be competitive once they branch out to other sectors.
Deputy Chairman of the Finance Committee in Parliament, Hon. Moses Edwin was impressed by the presentation and he said he believed that diversification is good for the corporation.
“My general impression about their budget is good, considering all what they have gone through and what they highlighted. They were praised by civil society organizations. I hope they (SLRTC) keep this momentum going,” Hon. Edwin told Politico.
He added: “This is a good thing, because they have been into transportation for quite a long time. Haulage involves big trucks and transportation of goods. It will be nice if they get into it; that will add another revenue stream for them.”
SLRTC’s public transportation service is preferred by most Sierra Leoneans, in the face of the increasingly exploitative private sector. But the public sector is marred by challenges. Chief among the issues is the dwindling number of buses on their fleet. The corporation said it only inherited 38 of the 100 buses that were controversially bought from China in 2015.
Commuters also complain of the attitude of the drivers and conductors towards passengers.
SLRTC officials say the long term plan is to address all these and many other issues facing the corporation. As part of the diversification project, they intend to establish a national garage to service government vehicles as per their mandate, for instance. This is important because many of the corporation’s buses are lost to lack of a proper maintenance infrastructure.
Tucker said in the coming years, their keen interest is in modernizing the transportation system.
Despite all this ambitious plan, there is no guarantee that the corporation may get the necessary support it needs from government, whose priority is education, which falls under the broader theme of Human Capital Development. But Tucker said, they will not necessarily need to wait for funds from government.
“We have given our budget. We are hoping they will have ways of making this budget available. But we are also not waiting around. We know government’s key program is education and that is where the greater part of the budget is going. As much as our program is a priority but it is not an express priority, so we are not going to wait for government,” he said.
Explaining a possible alternative to fund their plans, Tucker said: “What we will do is we can even approach banks, take loans and buy more buses. Or we activate the two hundred bus model which the ministry of transport has been working on, wherein Golden Dragons will come with buses and we develop regional depots to manage the transport system.”
© 2019 Politico Online
