Maputo’s Unidrive Academy for Dangerous Goods celebrates half year.
March 2020 marked the initiation of the Unidrive Dangerous Goods Driving Academy for Unitrans Mozambique. The Maputo depot employed their new driver trainer, Mr Jimmy Motupa, who is accredited through the Transport Education Training Authority.
The Unidrive Academy programme provides quality training and services which foster personal growth, skills, and performance enhancement. The objective is to facilitate a career where both new and experienced drivers can benefit equally from the training, as well as understand their role and its potential growth long term. Training focuses on the skills, knowledge, and attitude required to be an excellent driver at Unitrans.
The Academy’s programme is an 8-module in-depth focus on topics such as safety management, traffic regulations and driving techniques, as well as an additional elective module specifically covering the transport of hazardous goods by road. Drivers accredited through this programme can professionally and effectively utilise their knowledge in various country and context-specific scenarios involving unexpected or high-risk situations. The training additionally provides a broad understanding of every role in the business, together with the knowledge and legislation required for each job and destination.
At the Maputo depot, the concept of multi-skilling has been key to the establishment of the Driving Academy. Currently, the depot runs over 10 contracts regionally and cross-border, covering a broad range of products including cement, foods, fuel, lubricants and gas amongst others. The objective of multi-skilling requires that all drivers undergo the full Unidrive training, covering not only the modules to operate vehicle combinations, but also the full dangerous goods elective programme. This is to ensure that all drivers are aware of the products transported, not only within their contract, but also of all products transported by the depot operations. Any driver employed by the company can, therefore, at all times, professionally drive any of the vehicles loaded with any kind of product.
In the first six months, our driver training programme has graduated certified drivers in Maputo, Beira and Nacala.