Grief for small businesses and holidaymakers hit by NZTA's lax practices

Saturday, 2 February 2019

Urgent investigations into 19 NZ Transport Agency case files are continuing.

OPINION: Late last year I wrote about the mess that lax practices at the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) had created for Kiwi drivers - vehicle certifiers dumped for shoddy work, tens of thousands of Warrants of Fitness (WoF) deemed potentially unsafe, drivers instructed to take their cars back to the mechanic for a do-over.

It was a slow-motion multi-vehicle pile-up of a story, if you'll excuse the bad pun, first uncovered by Radio New Zealand a year ago. Today, it's my sorry duty to let you know how much worse this situation has become while we've all been on holiday. I know, you wouldn't credit it.

This time it's not your Toyota Yaris or even your fancy SUV at issue - that situation's been sorted, with vouchers for new WoFs sent out by NZTA to more than 20,000 drivers.

Not many have actually used the vouchers yet, but that's hardly the point here.

* Government has no idea how many unsafe cars are on the road

* Transport Agency's Waiheke probe part of a wider crackdown**

Aro Bros business partners Shirley Aro and Alex Puri at their place of business in Onehunga.

No, this concerns the tow bars attached to a different category of vehicles: heavy duty vehicles over 3.5 tonnes. That's commercial-grade utes, motorhomes, buses, trucks and the like. The kind of vehicles a lot of Kiwis use to make their living, or in the case of motorhomes, to enjoy their holidays or retirement.

They have another kind of certification, a CoF (certificate of fitness). The difference? For one thing, a WoF costs around 50 bucks. A CoF can cost about $150, with towbar recertification alone costing between $500 and $800. And while NZTA is forking out for the WoF vouchers, it's told CoF holders they're on their own.

That's the bit causing Shirley Aro considerable aggro. Shirley owns Aro Bros, a tow bar manufacturing and fitting business handed down from her dad James and uncle Harold. James and Harold were the first tow bar manufacturers in the North Island when they opened shop in Onehunga in 1960.

Shirley's worked there for more than 50 years (with a short break for her nursing training), and has owned it with business partner Alex Puri since 2007. Alex is 52 and has been working at Aro Bros since he was 17.

The first Shirley and Alex heard of any problems was in October, when their NZTA-approved certifier, Patrick Chu, told them he'd been suspended for allegedly wrongly certifying more than1400 attached tow bars.

For a while he got another engineer to help them out, but by Christmas their clients were getting phone calls from the NZTA telling them to stop towing things with their vehicles, as the tow bars might not be safe.

Patrick Chu's been doing Aro Bros' certification work since 2015. Shirley said they chose him because he was on the NZTA's list of recommended certifiers.

He's been on that list for 11 years, and in that time, he told Shirley, the NZTA re-appointed him several times. He denies any wrongdoing. Shirley has full confidence in Chu's work, and says none of the re-checks found any problems at all - but now 244 of her customers are starting to return, looking for someone to pay for their re-certification.

That someone will not be Shirley Aro.

'We can't afford to recertify every bugger's tow bar,' she tells me. 'We've done nothing wrong, but people are coming to us as the manufacturer, and saying, 'hey, you need to fix this'.

'One guy had his vehicle all packed up and ready to go away and the NZTA called him on Christmas Eve, can you believe it? They told him he couldn't go because they couldn't guarantee his tow bar was safe.'

Holidaymakers are in limbo as the NZTA suspends a CoF certifier for motorhomes and other heavy vehicles.

She says another had his recertified down south because he needed to get back to Auckland - it cost him $700.

'People are cranky because they've already paid. Why should they pay again?'

The work Aro Bros relies on at this time of year can't be done. Shirley's customers say they've been told the NZTA can't guarantee other engineers won't be suspended, so she lives in fear of going through it all again.

'How many others have they not audited on their list?'

Shirley hasn't paid for any of the re-certifications because if she had to, it would put Aro Bros. out of business. This is supposed to be their busiest time of the year, when 'we should be getting our fat for winter, because winter can be a lean time for us'.

It gets worse.

In a document on NZTA's website linked to the safety alert, the NZTA admits it has paid for re-certifications on very similar jobs done by another certifier, Peter Wastney. It reckons by doing that it never meant to set a precedent.

Instead, it says Patrick Chu's public liability insurance should cover it. Shirley says the insurance company wants to treat each case separately - so the excess payments required would make that impossible.

In a statement an NZTA spokesperson said it understood the certification revocation may cause 'stress and difficulty' but safety was its primary concern.

Shirley Aro has been in the tow bar business for decades, but a cloud hangs over its future thanks to the NZTA, writes Alison Mau.

'The Transport Agency considers that the Heavy Vehicle Specialist Certifier who issues a certification (in this case Mr Chu) is responsible for the certification and should cover the costs of re-inspections. We have advised vehicle owners affected by these revocations to discuss matters relating to re-inspection costs with Mr Chu and his insurer.'

That might sound reasonable if the NZTA hadn't already agreed to pay for very similar cases, and if they hadn't already publicly agreed their regulatory practices had 'failed' and they 'had to do better'. And let's not forget the repeated re-certification of Mr Chu.

Shirley Aro waited weeks for a response from NZTA - an email which repeated what's on the website.

Meanwhile, people are stuck at their holiday destinations who can't lawfully tow their boats and caravans home. There are drainlayers, builders, landscapers, truck sale and rental companies whose businesses are suffering. Shirley's had 30 letters of support and outrage from the owners of small businesses affected across Auckland.

It's a sorry mess - and this is just the latest chapter. Given fresh horrors are appearing every few weeks you do have to wonder how many more hard working people are going to find themselves struggling, before it's over.