Msunduzi Municipality
Pietermaritzburg, situated within the Msunduzi Municipal boundary, is the Capital City of The Province of KwaZulu-Natal.
Early 2013, it was noted by the municipality that they were experiencing a great deal of fuel fraud being perpetrated by their staff and as a result of this they hired a forensic investigator to investigate where and how the fraud was occurring and what mechanisms could be put in place to easily identify the fraud and to try stop it from happening completely.
This municipality has a total of eight homebases across the country and each fill was recorded manually on a spreadsheet which was loaded onto the system at a later stage. It was found that certain individuals were filling at a site, draining their tanks and then proceeding to another site and filling again and draining their tanks. This was occurring over and over with a variety of vehicles and drivers.
The attendants were also filling jerrycans with fuel and taking these home with them and recording them against plant equipment.
The municipality lost an estimated R5.1 million through 6 092 transactions in which fuel was stolen between July 2013 and June 2014.
When the data was being entered manually into the Municipality’s system, the data was unreliable as it was not being recorded correctly and it was impossible for the municipality to easily pick up fraudulent activity due to incorrect data being entered. By the time it was picked up, it was too late to do anything about it.
OTI PetroSmart was contact in May 2014 to do a presentation on our EasyFuelPlus system to the City Managers.
Our presentation to the municipality showed the benefits of our system and how it could prevent fraudulent activity at the municipality, such as:
- Right amount of the right type of fuel in the right tank.
- Minimum distance traveled before the vehicle could refuel again.
- Limit on the amount of times per day a vehicle can refuel.
- No human intervention.
- Reduced administration and operating costs.
- Accurate reporting of vehicle usage and fuel consumption across the fleet.
- Effective management of fuel consumption.
OTI PetroSmart were awarded the contract on the 11 August 2014.
We installed a total of home homebases across the Msunduzi region.
840 vehicles were installed with the Passive Tag, VID (Vehicle Identification Device) and the GOS Units to enable the customer to automatically track kilometres.
We are also providing a bureau service to the customer which will assist them in identifying any excess consumption and potential fraudulent activity.
The system was officially switched on, on the 1st of May 2015 and to date the municipality has already seen an improvement in their data management. The municipality now have accurate and usable information against which they can manage their fleet and in addition, they no longer require the data capturers to capture the data and can utilise those resources elsewhere.
Each section manager is now able to immediately identify which of his vehicles have refuelled and is better able to manage his section’s vehicles and budget correctly.
Through our Bureau Service, we have already identified vehicles with consumption that’s too high and requested that the municipality investigate.