Efforts to check vehicular pollution with the use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) has met with considerable success but poor quality imported kits are the reason behind a number of fatal accidents. An investigation:
Vehicle owners have switched from petrol and diesel to the cheaper CNG over the last two years but failure to standardise equipment has led to the market being flooded by cheap, unreliable kits.
Also investigations by Killid reveal the number of workshops fitting CNG kits have mushroomed, and only a handfull are certified to do the job. With the government failing to set up a supervising authority there are no checks on the quality of either the kits or the workshops.
According to the Ministry of Commerce, only six companies are licenced by the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA) to set up workshops.
Lack of monitoring is behind a spate of accidents involving CNG vehicles. On July 5, a car exploded in flames in the 9th District killing the driver. On Sep 9, in Balkh province, five people including a child were injured when their vehicle went up in flames.
Head of Kabul Traffic department, Asadullah, told Killid sometimes the vehicles have caught fire in the midst of traffic, affecting other vehicles and pedestrians on congested roads.
Conversations with staff in CNG fitting workshops reveal the accidents could be avoided. Saifudin Sadat, an engineer with the Kabul Italy Workshop that has been fitting CNG kits for the last 18 months, says customers cannot make out fake kits from originals. The workshop sources its kits from Italy. “There are fake kits available in the market. Customers cannot make out a fake from the real thing,” says Sadat.
Untrained mechanics are also to blame. “If the persons involved in fitting the kit in workshops have been trained there is no risk to anyone,” he says.
Haji Abdul Satar, the head of Manan Ahad Italian Gas Co., blames accidents on technical problems and cheap spare parts. “The kits that caused the accident could have been imported from anywhere. There are no quality standards,” he says.
He believes customers select the kit according to what they can afford. Kit manufacturers say they give a three-year guarantee but in Afghanistan they offer free technical services instead because of the poor quality of CNG.
Regulate market
Head of Kabul Traffic Asadullah thinks the National Norm and Standards Office should fix standards to weed out fake kits from the market. But department officials say the whole process of switching from petrol to CNG has no legal basis, and hence standards have not followed.
Assistant Director in the national office Mujibul Rahman Khateer says the distribution of permits are arbitrary and not in consultation with his office. Permits are issued prior to the verification of documents by the National Norm and Standards Office.”Unfortunately we don’t know where the permits are being issued,” says Khateer.
According to him, repeated requests have been made to both the traffic department (Ministry of Interior Affairs) and National Environment Protection Agency, through letters, to shut down all unprofessionally run workshops through the enforcement of rules and regulations that delineate responsibility but unfortunately no step has been taken in this regard.
Investigations by Killid reveal the permits are issued by the Kabul municipality, Ministry of Commerce and AISA. Haji Satar of Manan Ahad Italian Gas Co., says they have permits from AISA and the municipality. Also the company is registered with the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce & Industries.
Ahmad Jawad, an engineer in the year-old Turkish Technical workshop, says no one has ever visited the workshop to scrutinise the services.
Saifudin Sadat, an engineer in Kabul Italy Workshop in Kabul’s 7th District says, “We have permits from AISA as well as from the Ministry of Commerce to import and fit CNG kits.”
Fixing blame
This flies in the face of the Ministry of Commerce’s claim that it has never issued such permits. Spokesperson Musafer Quqandi says the ministry only registers companies that were issued permits by AISA. “We have registered only 9 companies with permits from AISA … Supervision is their responsibility.”
Meanwhile, AISA says it has given permits to only “5-6 companies”. Assistant Director Mohammad Ibrahim Shams says, “Despite the big demand from investors for setting up CNG workshops, we gave work permits only to 4-5 companies. The permits are conditional, and extended only when they have an agreement with the National Norm and Standard Office ensuring the quality of equipment and gas pipes as well as professional staff.”
Meanwhile, Khair Mohammad Safdari says Kabul Municipality has issued only two permits. “Efforts are underway to shut down illegal workshops,” he claims. “We have ordered all Kabul city districts to prevent the activities of companies without permits. Most of them are not working now, and only two or three of them are working and they have permits.”
The truth, however, is that no workshop has shut, and their numbers are only increasing.
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