The Brake and Tyrewatch trained 90 members of the Cross Border Road Transport Agency who came in from all over the country – including border posts – for the training. This is an encouraging development for they are now better equipped to stop unroadworthy vehicles from entering the country.
Paul Nordengen represented SARF and presented a paper and handed out a SARF prize. Ismail Essa-SANRAL and Graham Esterhuysen TRAC both presented at the B&T event.
Because of the rain on the second, practical training day, there weren’t as many vehicles checked as we normally do. This is because Patrick O’ leary could not let the experts and trainees work in the rain as they would have got sopping wet in no time. It was coming down heavy in the morning. We thus concentrated on each team receiving good quality training under cover in the Donkerhoek test centre with more time that usual spent under the trucks on the pit showing them the various components, how they work and what goes wrong. After that, we tested 12 trucks of which five were taken off the road. Four of them had faults which were fixed by mechanics who they called in and were retested and found to be OK. It was, once again, mainly braking faults. The one, with absolutely no brakes – an interlink – was served with a Discontinuation of Service notice.
The feedback from both the CBRTA management as well as the trainees was very encouraging with one of the CBRTA officials saying it was the best training they had received in years. Patrick spoke to Onica from the CBRTA and she was so enthusiastic about the whole exercise.
All in all, it was a great success and Patrick once again thanked SARF for partnering Brake and Tyrewatch on this initiative. Patrick said: “Without SARF’s participation and involvement, we would not be able to do this”.
