Midrand community demands answers

Midrand community members expressed their concerns on a social media post about the City of Johannesburg not providing the fire station in the area with fire trucks.

This comes after a fire erupted at the Vorna Valley Sunset View Complex, as reported in the Midrand Reporter article Blaze erupts, fire trucks respond 1 hour later [Week ending 31 May].

In one of the social media post comments, Christelle Grove said, “We have a fire station in Midrand but we have not had a truck for more than a year.”

Some of the commenters claimed that the fire station had several fire engines which got swallowed up by the City.

In response, Public Safety MMC Michael Sun said that when they took office, there was a fire engine procurement contract in place but the supplier went into business rescue and was also faced with illegalities and fraud allegations and the contract had to be terminated.

“Before we terminated the contract, we salvaged seven fire engines out of that contract, five new fire engines, and two newly refurbished fire engines.

“Then we had to recommence the procurement process again about a month and a half back. When we went through the whole process and identified a supplier, two days before the City manager was about to announce the winner of the contract, we received a letter from the preferred supplier which said they no longer wanted to supply the City with fire engines, withdrawing from the contract. That left us in a position where we no longer had a preferred supplier.

“Our alternative plan was to look for other suppliers which had fire engines available, which we have already commenced two weeks back. We are busy engaging with suppliers who have available fire engines in stock that we can procure through an alternative procurement process.

“We will recommence a formal procurement process because we still need to go put out an advert for a tender so capable suppliers can bid for the tender.”

He said that even though Midrand doesn’t have a fire engine, areas are serviced in terms of districts – if there is a fire in Midrand and the Midrand fire engine cannot attend to it, it will be attended to by the next available fire engine from another department or district.

He stressed that their ultimate plan is to have one fire engine placed at each department permanently.

https://www.citizen.co.za/midrand-reporter/198531/watch-midrand-police-host-community-members-fire-station-celebrate-mandela-day/