UPDATE: City wins battle but gears up for war on Tshwane R1.7bn fleet contract
“This strengthens our resolve to in the fight to get out of this rotten deal.”
The North Gauteng High Court has dismissed a bid to prevent the Tshwane metro from buying its own cars.
MMC for corporate and shared services Cilliers Brink told Rekord that on Tuesday, 26 March a transport supplier to the city had gone to court to get an interdict against the metro to prevent it from buying vehicles through a tender from National Treasury.
Brink said the metro was in the process of purchasing more vehicles while the service provider claims exclusivity.
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“The City opposed the application based on the fact that the contract has reached its total contractual value.”
He said public/private partnership (PPP) worth R1.7-billion between the metro and three suppliers was approved by the municipal council in January 2016, a few months before the ANC was voted out of power.
At the time, the DA warned the former executive mayor that councillors did not have enough information to support the five-year multi-billion-rand deal, but according to Brink it was signed anyway.
“When the DA-led multiparty government took office in August 2016, we inherited a fleet in a state of total shambles.”
Brink said they found that contractual provisions under the PPP were heavily biased against the metro and at least one supplier never had the ability to deliver on obligations.
“In just six months, the new deal had gutted our fleet availability.
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“In early 2017, we decided to take the agreement on judicial review as it does not comply with the necessary legislative and regulatory prescripts, and the court date has been set down for 15 and 16 April 2019.”
Brink said Tuesday’s court ruling in favour of the metro was a major tactical victory “in the war to extricate us from a bad deal that offers poor value-for-money for the city’s residents”.
“This strengthens our resolve to in the fight to get out of this rotten deal.”
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