By Doh Bertrand Nua
Officials of the Small and Medium Sized Enterprises Promotion Agency (SMEPA) and experts have raised concerns over the disorganised nature of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) operating in the automobile maintenance and repair sectors nationwide and expressed the wish to put order in sector.
SMEPA Deputy General Manager, Ewusi Eric
This was during a training workshop held Wednesday 2 December 2020 at the Jean XXIII Centre at Mvolye, Yaounde. The workshop aimed at taking stock of activities in the sector as well brainstorm on ways through which SMEPA harmonise and ameliorated the sector.
It was attended by a cross-section of actors involved in the sector, including owners of automobile firms, mechanics, and dealers in vehicle parts, those involved in maintenance among others.
Speaking to reporters after the training, SMEPA Deputy General Manager, Ewusi Eric, described the sector as complex, stating that the agency is delving into it because it is not well understood by business operators who carry out their activities in the manner they deem fit and think they have been abandoned.
Participants pose with officials
He decried the disorder reigning in the sector, attributing it to lack of regulation, structuring or organisation. He stated that the agency will explore all necessary approaches to ameliorate and put order in the sector.
He said SMEPA will generate in-depth study and a plan at the end of the workshop with possible solutions towards ameliorating the sector by regrouping actors, develop convenient training methods which can be developed for them.
In his presentation on the state of affairs in the sector, Nouya J. Bethel, Director General of GENEX, a local enterprise that does technical appraisal, controls, studies, advice and evaluation in automobiles, underscored the varied importance regulating the sector including the reduction in road accidents partly resulting from faults of automobile repair technicians.
He disclosed that they are about 1000 deaths recorded in the country through road accidents per year with about 16 cases per day partly due to inappropriate technical works done on cars.
Nouya proposed proper training, creation of an inter-professional organisation for those in the sector, ensure authorisations and issued to those wishing to operate and their locations well identified within municipalities and installed in areas that follow environmental regulations, work security. This he said will even make the actors more economically viable.
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