DURBAN - THE Go!Durban transport project could face more delays due to a dispute between the eThekwini Municipality and taxi operators over who should own the buses that will operate on these routes.
The taxi and bus operators believe they should have full ownership of the buses but the municipality believes it should own a percentage of them, The Mercury has learnt from taxi operators.
The Mercury understands that the buses will be bought by the city.
The launch of the Go!Durban first route between KwaMashu and Pinetown was expected this month after it missed the July deadline, but the taxi operators said the issue of the bus ownership was a sticking point that needed to be resolved before a launch date was announced.
The delays have irked some members of the outgoing council in eThekwini who said they were tantamount to wasteful expenditure as the city had spent money on the project but the residents were yet to derive value from it.
In an interview with The Mercury, the eThekwini Municipality’s head of Transport Authority, Thami Manyathi, said there was one difficult issue that the city was negotiating with the operators that would need to be resolved before the launch took place. He declined to reveal what the issue was.
However, Mathula Mkhize of the SA National Taxi Council said the issue was the ownership of the buses.
In publicity material on the project, the city said Go!Durban aimed to provide a flexible, safe, cost-effective, transport experience for eThekwini.
A council document tabled last month had said the transport network would go live with its first complete route this month; it was initially scheduled for July but it was postponed.
Manyathi said the city had engaged with bus and taxi operators and all the issues bar one had been resolved.
“Some of our meetings occurred during the period when the council was in recess and we might have to wait for the new council to be put in place and approve our plans before we can launch the route,” he said.
He said the launch could still go ahead this month provided negotiations between the municipality and the operators over the outstanding issue were successful. If this failed, the intervention of the new council would be required.
Manyathi said the riots in July had damaged some of their infrastructure which had to be repaired.
He said the C3 route was ready for launch and the C2 route, which would involve the use of trains, was also coming along and some trains were already being tested in preparation.
Mkhize agreed that there was only one issue outstanding.
“The city wants to own a certain percentage of the buses, but we feel that this could not be the case, we feel that the taxi owners own their taxis and the bus operators own their buses and we should therefore own these buses.”
IFP councillor Mdu Nkosi said this was another outcome of the poor consultation processes that preceded the start of the project.
He said the failure of the project to launch as scheduled was tantamount to wasteful expenditure.
“We have infrastructure worth billions of rand that is sitting gathering dust, this infrastructure was meant to create economic spin-offs for the city.
DA councillor Thabani Mthethwa shared the same sentiments, saying they had warned the municipality to engage properly with the stakeholders to avoid such difficulties once the project got under way.
“Halfway through the project it became clear that taxi operators were unhappy and the municipality over-committed itself to promises to the industry and this is now backfiring.”
THE MERCURY