By Robert A. Emmanuel
Almost 1,200 government-issued vehicles are currently traversing the roads of Antigua and Barbuda, Minister of Works Maria Browne told a recent Cabinet meeting.
An initial investigation by her department revealed that there were 1,170 such vehicles. They are regularly provided with gasoline and maintenance paid by the Antigua and Barbuda Transport Board, and the Cabinet plans to reduce this number amid efforts to curb government spending, Cabinet notes revealed.
During yesterday’s post-Cabinet briefing, Chief of Staff in the Prime Minister’s Office Lionel Hurst could not give a precise breakdown as to how the vehicles are distributed across the various government departments, or how much it costs the government annually in maintenance and fuel fees, but he attributed many of these vehicles being on the road to “favours”.
“This is a small country where people know each other, so there is a lot of favours granted using government resources to afford that — the insurance, the gasoline, the registration fees … they could be real revenues received if these were private individuals driving their own vehicles and not government vehicles, and we are looking to reduce that,” Hurst said.
According to a source who is knowledgeable of vehicle maintenance and operations, the costs of maintenance and “repairs and fuel differ, depending on engine size, type of vehicle and usage”.
The source noted that maintenance of privately-owned vehicles — which includes oil change, filters, air conditioning maintenance checks, cleaning, and lubricants — could amount to $1,000 per month. Comparatively speaking, with fuel costs ranging from $200 to $300 monthly for private vehicles, the tab for government-issued vehicles could be upwards of three times that amount due to the extensive usage of those vehicles.
The government has repeatedly sought to crack down on the misuse of its vehicles, and in 2018 announced it would undertake an audit of government vehicles.
Government-issued vehicles often bear the registration plates ‘GV’ or ‘G’, but according to Ambassador Hurst, some could carry registration plates with ‘A’ or ‘C’, which are normally associated with privately-owned vehicles.
“We think the people of Antigua and Barbuda would much rather [that] we spend taxpayers’ money on getting useful things done rather than on employees of the government to which they are not entitled,” he pointed out.
Hurst said that the Antigua Public Utilities Authority has the largest fleet of government-issued vehicles, many of which are deemed useful for its regular operations, but a further assessment needed to be done pertaining to this issue.
