AB has only two reliable aircrafts

Pauline Dikuelo | Wednesday June 11, 2014 06:00

 

The permanent secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Communications Masego Thebe shared this predicament with the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday.

The revelation shocked legislators who sit in the PAC.

“Your presentation is worrisome as it indicates that things are falling apart in your Ministry especially in the transport sector,” said MP for Selebi-Phikwe West, Gilson Saleshando.

He noted that this was an indication that Air Botswana is not efficient, narrating a disappointing personal experience.  

“I once encountered a problem at Maun, the plane could not start off and we were forced to wait till midnight and continue the journey the following day,” said Saleshando. 

Another PAC member, Kentse Rammidi also questioned the safety of using these un-serviced flights, noting that they could be a danger to passengers. 

In response, Thebe said it was true that AB had been experiencing lots of delays due to lack of sufficient aircrafts. She, however, assured the legislators that experts have been engaged to address these issues.

“This has born fruit as recently we managed to record less cancellation of aircrafts. We have also removed the inefficient three air crafts from their routes and only four are in use, despite the other two needing servicing,” she said.

Domestically AB services the Francistown, Maun and Kasane routes daily  while regionally the airline flies to Johannesburg, Cape Town, Harare and Lusaka. 

Another member of the PAC, Fedelis Molao wanted the ministry to look into the flights pricing saying because of the high costs, many Batswana cannot afford to fly. “We as locals only use these flights on the government and company trips,” he said.

Earlier this year the MTC admitted that the national carrier, Air Botswana has been experiencing some financial meltdown which runs the risk of high schedule disruptions as well as inability to fund its daily operations.  

This has led to Air Botswana recording financial losses with much customer dissatisfaction due to the schedule disruptions.

In order to address these issues, the ministry proposed to resource the national carrier by diverting development funding from secondary roads, bridges and weighbridges construction. 

They also plan to focus more on cargo handling as part of efforts to diversify instead of total dependency on passenger transportation whose profitability has been eroded by competition, capitalisation issues and fleet challenges.

During this year’s budget, the Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Kenneth Matambo announced a proposed ‘cash injection’ of P330 million to Air Botswana, which the portfolio minister, Nonofo Molefhi stated was not for re-fleeting but for “supporting management costs”.