While the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality rushes to procure 40 new buses for the upcoming Kariega route, the IPTS buses launched less than a year ago for the Cleary Park service have been idle for three months due to the city’s struggle to pay the Volvo service centre.
Eleven of the 25 Libongolwethu buses are sitting idle at the depot with broken windows and doors, leaking oil tanks and flat tires, while another five remain impounded at the Deal Party service station.
With more than R4bn injected into the project since its start, the DA has called for an intervention from the national transport department to oversee the operations.
On Monday, DA provincial chair Yusuf Cassim and DA councillor Rano Kayser joined the party’s mayoral candidate, Retief Odendaal, for an on-site inspection which exposed the deteriorating condition of the buses.
Odendaal warned that if the situation was not urgently addressed, the city risked losing the R400m in grant funding it received from the national fiscus.
“We have come to a stage where if this council and the provincial government do not take a firm stance, we might lose this project because they can funnel that money elsewhere where the government can make a difference,” he said.
“The reality is that the national government has spent more than R4bn on this project.
“No public transportation in the world is not heavily subsidised.
“We accept that, but there is no way the national government will continue to subsidise a project.”
Odendaal said he would write to the National Treasury and the transport department to request the secondment of a project manager and a financial manager to take over.
“In 2023/2024, Cape Town MyCiTi transported 19.3-million passengers, during the same time the George municipality transported 5.9-million, a significantly smaller municipality than Nelson Mandela Bay.
“Even under guidance, it was not good enough; we needed to double and triple those numbers to justify the investment made here.
“We have seen yet another turnaround plan, and hopefully it will bear some fruit, but that in itself will not be enough.”
The city reintroduced the buses in June 2024, a year after they were pulled off the road because they were not roadworthy
At the time, the city had negotiated a service agreement with Volvo, which brought eight buses back into operation.
Odendaal said, however, that the cosmetic work done had been a poor return on investment for the city.
Roads and transport political head Yolisa Pali said the buses would be on the road soon.
“We owed about R5m and we have been trying to get that resolved.
“I believe final payments are being made, which is what has been causing us not to get the buses back on the road,” she said.
The Herald
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