AMMAN – The Legislation and Opinion Bureau has amended the organisational structure of the Transport Ministry to enable it to set up a special department to control the use of government vehicles. 

According to the amended draft by-law published on the bureau’s website, a special department will be established with the aim of tracking and controlling public vehicles, in a step by the government to regulate the use of its fleet, estimated to include 20,000 cars. 

The amendment of the by-law comes nearly a month after telecom operator Zain Jordan won a bid to install a tracking system on public vehicles using GPS technology.

Under the government tender, Zain Jordan will install the tracking system on 5,000 public vehicles over the next six months and then expand to cover 20,000 vehicles in the final stages of the project. 

The tracking project will help increase productivity, reduce operational costs and cut fuel consumption, according to the partners in the tender, Traklink and General Computers and Electronics Co.

The projected system will enable live monitoring of the vehicles as well as any violations of speed limits, route changes or use outside working hours. 

Using the system, which saves information in a database, will also help cut the vehicles’ maintenance costs by 15-20 per cent, according to Zain Jordan.

According to official figures, the maintenance and fuel bill for the government fleet amounted to JD39.1 million in 2014.