Safety issues blamed on staffing cuts
The road transport industry says restructuring has gutted the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) of experienced staff and industry is paying the price.
Transport Minister Phil Twyford has announced a review of the agency to be conducted by law firm Meredith Connell, saying NZTA had failed to properly check up on companies that certify vehicle safety and follow up on problems identified.
Road Transport Association chief executive Dennis Robertson said constant restructuring over the past 10 to 15 years had taken its toll on NZTA.
‘‘All those heavy motor vehicle people with this expertise in NZTA – they’ve all gone. They’ve lost that intellectual capacity and they haven’t replaced it. My take on it is that they haven’t had the skilled mechanical engineering people in NZTA that can go out and look at these things and say, ‘We have a problem here.’ ’’
That was vital because transport operators relied heavily on the knowledge of independent certifiers, two of whom had been suspended by NZTA over towbar standards.
The fact that NZTA was hiring an extra 20 staff, including two additional auditors, indicated there was a need to more closely ‘‘check the checkers’’, he said.
‘‘I wouldn’t have thought there would be a driver or truck operator that would challenge [a certifier]; they accept that these people know what they are talking about.’’
NZTA chairman Michael Stiassny said self-regulation and a focus on educating operators instead of enforcing rules had not worked. It was clear that more unsafe vehicles were on the road than should have been, he said.
However, Robertson believed self-regulation was working and said there had not been been a huge increase in unsafe vehicles on the road.
‘‘In fact the crash rate is dropping, and mechanical issues in terms of crash rates for heavy motor vehicles is as low as 6 [per cent] or 7 per cent.’’