Shukor during the interview with Bernama. — Bernama photo
KUALA LUMPUR: Puspakom has made great strides in its operational capacity and efficiency in the 24 years it has been in existence as the national inspection company to undertake mandatory inspections of both commercial and private motor vehicles, said its chief executive officer.
Mohammed Shukor Ismail said these had been achieved at great costs to double its infrastructure and resources to cope with the huge increase in demand for vehicle inspections which rose from 500,000 to three million a year during the period.
A wholly-owned subsidiary of DRB-HICOM Berhad, Puspakom’s main roles are to conduct inspection on vehicles to ensure their safety and roadworthiness as well as compliance with the regulations on preserving the environment via emission tests.
It runs a nation-wide network of 56 full-fledged and well-equipped inspection centres complemented by more than 25 inspection visiting sites that provide inspection services in the less populated and rural areas.
Shukor told Bernama that the waiting time for customers to get their vehicles inspected had been reduced from four to five hours previously to less than one hour now.
Besides this, innovations to enhance customer experience had been introduced such as online reservation and payment solution while appointments can be made through simple and easy application known as MyPuspakom.
“Reducing the waiting time to less than an hour is a big achievement or more than 70 per cent for us.
The service in Puspakom is about the waiting time, talking about how long we have to wait,” he said.
The main focus had been on manpower followed by machines and the systems towards achieving customer convenience and satisfaction.
“We have to increase our manpower from less than 600 when we started to more than 1,400 now who are all trained and certified to do vehicle inspection under whatever procedures required.
“Our focus is on technology advancement. We have improved aspects of the equipment, system and processes. That alone have brought about better cycle time or saving in terms of the improvements and waiting time,” Shukor said.
Under MyPuspakom, customers can book their appointment date and time at the nearest branch and make online payment without having to pay unnecessary costs running into hundreds of ringgit when customers deal with a third party instead of directly with Puspakom.
“We have been promoting for many years now for customers to deal directly with us. Our fees are between RM20 and RM90 according to vehicle types and inspection. It’s cost-saving to customers by using MyPuspakom Apps,” he said.
By dealing with a third party, some customers were under the perception that their vehicles would require inspection when in fact they were in roadworthy conditions.
“By dealing directly with us, you don’t have to pay such an exorbitant amount just for the sake of perception.
In actual fact, your vehicle is probably in good condition. Worse case is you fail the inspection, you send it for repair, you can arrange for re-inspection. So that is the worst case scenario,” he added.
Shukor pointed out that it was the people’s responsibility to ensure their vehicles’ roadworthiness for their safety and the safety of other road users.
Deputy Transport Minister Kamaruddin Jaafar told Parliament recently that the market for vehicles that were required to undergo inspection was only eight per cent of the total number of four-wheeled vehicles in the country.
He said up to this year, Puspakom had spent RM2 billion on operating expenditure and RM550 million on development. — Bernama