The City of Tshwane’s newly-purchased 161 fleet of vehicles valued at R60 million will go a long way in assisting the municipality in saving public money instead of spending millions of rand leasing them from private contractors.
This was echoed by different speakers during the official launch of vehicles at the municipal fleet management offices in Pretoria on Tuesday.
Executive Mayor Cilliers Brink said while he was the MMC for corporate and shared services there were problems with accessing vehicles for service delivery because half of them were broken.
Other vehicles, he said, were in the hands of some contractors who leased them to the city at exorbitant costs.
“Buying our own vehicles is a way of saving money for the taxpayers of our capital city. It is a way of getting value for money. And the other important aspect of buying our vehicles instead of leasing them to make somebody else wealthy is that we have to look after these vehicles,” he said.
The incumbent MMC for Corporate and Shared Services, Kingsley Wakelin, said launch of vehicles formed part of the city’s fleet strategy started in 2018 to procure its own vehicles and reduce expensive lease costs.
He said the objective was for the city to eventually exit all vehicle leases and eliminate the annual R400m that went towards servicing expensive vehicle leasing charges.
“In December 2022, we bought 238 vehicles at the value of R100m outright. This reduced the cost of leasing annually from R400m to R200m,” he said.
The fleet unveiled yesterday consisted of double and single cab vehicles and sedans and brought the total number of vehicles owned by the city to 1 513.
Of the 161 vehicles 80 of them would be allocated to the Tshwane metro police department for by law enforcement.
At least 15 vehicles will be used for the city’s revenue collection drive, known as Tshwane Ya Tima, charged with disconnecting electricity of non-paying customers.
The regional operations centre will be provided with 17 vehicles while 18 are destined for the electricity department.
Water and sanitation department will receive 10 vehicles while the roads and transport department will have five of them to transport officials while going to fix traffic lights.
Sixteen vehicles will be used as-and-when required between the different departments.
Wakelin said the city will spend an additional R40m in the next financial year, starting in July, to buy more vehicles.
“The vehicle abuse management committee will be properly activated with key performance indicators and its group heads transversal agreement with fleet vehicles department to ensure that they will be held accountable for vehicles,” he said.
Group head for shared services, Musa Khumalo, said: “This is another opportunity for the city to supplement its capacity to respond to the everyday challenges that people have, especially those of electricity, water as well as those of traffic lights that are off. Part of this particular capacity is to ensure that the city is able to respond timeously.”
He said buying vehicles was also an opportunity to invest in the city’s assets while exiting some of the expensive leases that were in force for a number of years.
Pretoria News