“Read Your Vehicle Manual,” A Master Mechanic Advises

KOFI AYIM

On a fenced wall tucked in the middle of Light Industrial Area, near Community 25 in Tema, Ghana, is a facility embossed with the inscription SAMDUS Engineering Company. Inside the one-half acre of land is a one-stop repair facility that comprises an electro-mechanics repair shop, an auto body workshop, and a spray shop.

Mr. Samuel Edusei, a businessman and owner of the facility, started his auto mechanics apprenticeship at Berekum in 1979 after graduating from Sunyani Technical School. After school he moved to Kumasi and worked briefly at Société Commerciale de l’Ouest Africain (SCOA) and later at R. T. Briscoe. With his acquired skills he was recruited in 1983 by Bilfinger & Berger, a German conglomerate with massive civil engineering contracts in Nigeria, to fix heavy equipment machinery and vehicles. Sammy, as he is popularly known, spent about a year in Kaduna State, before being sent to Malta. He was later assigned by the company to Libya, where he ended up fixing vehicles for a Libyan auto company after his employment with Bilfinger & Berger dried up.

Because Peugeot was the choice of vehicle in Libya – to withstand the tough desert environment – Sammy and seven of his fellow workers were sent to France for a year to specialize in Peugeot vehicle construction, maintenance and repairs. He spent seven years in Libya, then returned to Ghana before traveling to the United Kingdom and transitioning to Toronto and Montreal, Canada. After three years of auto mechanics work in Canada, Sammy decided to bring his skills to New York City and eventually Newark, New Jersey where he managed and operated a shop first on 18th Avenue, and later on Central Avenue for over a decade.

In 2010, Mr. Edusei relocated to Ghana and established SAMDUS Engineering Company.  The shop boasts of twenty employees. Technical school interns from various parts of the country are regularly sent to the shop for hands-on training. The auto and electrical repair shop have eleven hoists (lifts) of varying capacities, from 9,000 to 14,000 pounds. He contends that his shop is equipped with cutting-edge diagnostic tools and equipment. The 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., six-day-a-week facility handles all makes and model vehicles from Europe, North America, and Asia. It also has contractual agreements to maintain and repair business vehicles.

To facilitate the repairs and optimize turnaround time, the unassuming businessman has established a spare parts shop and a tow truck business in Tema. Mr. Edusei not only supervises his auto repair employees, he gets his hands greasy at the least opportune time. He strongly advises motor vehicle operators to carefully read their vehicle manuals to educate and acquaint themselves with the functions, signs, and symbols of the vehicles they operate. “The root cause of a headache may be constipation, so taking a headache medicine may temporarily relieve the symptoms, while the problem (constipation) may persist,” he said analogically. “And stay away from wayside self-made mechanics who could easily misdiagnose and aggravate an existing problem, thus putting lives in jeopardy.”     

Posted by admin on Jul 2 2020. Filed under Community News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry