Pretoria - Hundreds of commuters in Tshwane were yesterday left stranded, after the City of Tshwane on Monday announced the temporary suspension of Tshwane Bus Services operation owing to fuel shortages.
In a media statement, the metro informed commuters about the temporary suspension of bus operations with effect from September 19 in the afternoon after at least 50% of the buses ran out of fuel.
“The metropolitan municipality has engaged the fuel service provider, who has since promised to strive to deliver fuel tonight (Monday night). It is hoped that if the service provider delivers as promised, operations will resume tomorrow (Tuesday) morning, September 20, 2022,” it said.
However, yesterday the situation had not changed as the City’s delivery of diesel was not received as anticipated.
Municipal spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the situation affected more than half of the Tshwane Bus Services fleet parked at the bus depot due to a lack of diesel.
“More than half of the Tshwane Bus Services fleet is not running this morning because we did not get the delivery of diesel last night as we had anticipated,” Bokaba said.
He said the few buses running were those that had some residue of diesel left in their tanks, adding that their “diesel would soon be depleted”.
“We wish to reiterate our apology to our valued commuters for the inconvenience caused.
“We will continue to engage with our service provider with a view to expediting the delivery of diesel today so that services can return to normal,” Bokaba said.
Meanwhile, the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) expressed concern regarding the failure of the City to provide fuel for its fleet, especially metro buses.
During a march to Tshwane House on August 19, the union raised challenges experienced by bus drivers, especially on licensing of buses and procurement of fuel.
“Buses consume at least 100 000 litres of diesel per day, but the City is only buying 29 000 litres of diesel per week,” the union said at the time.
Yesterday, union regional secretary Mpho Tladinyane said: “It is unfortunate that this scourge is now extending to other departments, including metro police and infrastructure departments.
“The situation puts the lives of workers at risk since community members take it that municipal workers are lazy to provide services only to find that there is no fleet and if such is available, there is no fuel.”
Meanwhile, the City announced yesterday afternoon that bus operations returned to full capacity following the delivery of fuel.
Bokaba said: “The City’s fleet experienced a shortage of diesel yesterday and the service provider undertook to deliver last night, however, delivery could not be done due to some logistical glitches.”
By 2pm, he said that more than 70 buses had already filled up while others were queuing to fill up.
He said the City utilised a different service provider, Engen Filling Station in Pretoria West, to replenish its fleet with fuel, as a stop-gap measure, to obviate the fuel shortage challenge and to ensure that operations were not severely impacted.
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