Pretoria – The City of Tshwane on Monday unveiled a fleet of 238 newly procured vehicles.
“Earlier today, I joined the MMC for Corporate and Shared Services, Cllr Kingsley Wakelin, to officially hand over newly procured City-owned fleet vehicles,” said Tshwane Mayor Randall Williams.
The City of Tshwane said the launch today was for the first batch of 100 fleet vehicles.
“Overall, for the 2022/23 financial year, we are procuring 238 vehicles at a cost of about R100 million,” said Mayor Williams.
He said the fleet vehicle launch was significant on many fronts.
“A few months ago, the City faced a media storm over allegations of fleet vehicles being confiscated,” said the mayor.
“This was obviously a false politically driven narrative. The real story here is that the City embarked on a process of acquiring vehicles by means of an outright purchase model.”
Mayor Williams said the process aims to significantly reduce vehicle leasing costs.
“Purchasing our vehicles, instead of leasing them, will minimise our dependency on service providers and ensure that our in-house artisans are fully used,” said Williams.
“Importantly, it will reduce our annual leasing costs from R400 million to less than R180 million.
“The fleet includes waste collection skip loaders, waste compactors and light commercial vehicles.
“‘These vehicles will be put into use immediately to serve our communities.”
The mayor said during the allocation, priority will be given to service delivery departments, such as the Tshwane Metro Police Department, Water and Sanitation Department, Environment and Agriculture Management Department, Energy and Electricity Department, and Roads and Transport Department.
“It is important that we move away from exorbitant lease contracts that were signed and approved by past administrations,” said Williams.
“Our aim is to stabilise City finances and cut down on expenditure, so that we can plough this money back to providing core services to our communities.”
