Zambia World Wide

This is of course not true, I am still foreman of the transmission section and township electrical department, and am also responsible for the rigging department, this is a very busy time for me as we have a lot of work going on in all three sections. The company had always sent their air conditioning units plus domestic fridges to a local company for repair. For some time I had been keeping a check on the work we were invoiced for and was not happy with the rising costs of labour and in particular spare parts. I was also convinced we were being charged for items that were not fitted. I queried this with the company and was told that due to import restrictions they had no choice but to raise their prices by a substantial amount, there were other excuses but none that I believed as I knew about the cost of importing spares into Zambia which had not risen for at least five years. I really was not happy with the reasons they gave, so decided to send a working air conditioning unit for repair. Before I sent the unit I marked the various components, and then waited for it to be returned with the invoice. One week later it came back and I checked the unit against the invoice and found we had been charged for a new compressor that had not been fitted. When I pointed this out they refuted our findings and said that since they were the only refrigeration company in town we had no choice but to have our repairs carried out by them. Making that kind of statement is both foolish and irresponsible, they were about to pay the price for their arrogance. Having worked on refrigeration units some years earlier, I knew that if we could obtain the spares and equipment, we were quite capable of carrying out our own repairs.

My first step was to see the refrigeration foreman at Rokana Mine concerning the availability of spares and equipment, plus the availability of gas. He supplied all the information that I required, the tools would have to be imported from England but most of the spares were available in Zambia. He also agreed to train some of my staff in refrigeration repairs. Now I had the information that I required it was time to see my engineer and convince him that we could do the work and also save the company a considerable amount of money. I went to his office and after a short meeting he agreed that we were being overcharged for the work they supposedly carried out. We then went through my list of equipment we would need and the training of my staff. Once again I went to see the refrigeration foreman at the mine only this time the engineer came with me. After our meeting with the mine foreman, he was also convinced that we were capable of doing the work ourselves. There was now only one hurdle left which was to get the General Manger to agree with us, as we could not proceed further without his permission. By now I was convinced that he would agree, so a meeting was arranged between the three of us. With the help of the maintenance engineer we managed to convince him that it could be done. Now that we had his consent it was time to get moving, I ordered the equipment from England which I knew could take up to two months to arrive. While waiting for the equipment I sent two of my electricians to the mine for training. I really wanted four men trained but the mine would accept only two at any one time, I did get the four but over a longer period than I had wished for. The reason I wanted four was to cover for sickness and holidays. After the first two had completed their training and the equipment had arrived we never again used an outside company to repair our units. Once our men caught up with the backlog then life got easier for them and there were times when they had little work to do. This was noticed by the general manager who then came up with the idea that we should take in work from outside of the company. This turned out to be an excellent idea, so many people and companies had been virtually held to ransom over the years that they gladly came to us for any repairs that were required. The section became so successful that after a short time the profit from outside work covered the cost of our repairs. We did however also carry out repairs at no cost for the Hospitals and Clubs around the town, this the general manager insisted was the right thing to do. There were no arguments from us as we totally agreed. I would not like to think how much it cost the local company who had said you have no choice but to deal with us.