Pretoria - The City of Tshwane had to scrape for reserves at its fuel tanks to transport half of its Bus Rapid Transit commuters after temporarily suspending services due to shortages
The City had announced last night that it would not be able to operate its buses yesterday after its pumps ran dry.
This was after the supplier failed to deliver diesel, but through the reserves, the metro managed to operate 90 of its 160 buses in the morning.
City spokesperson Lindela Mashigo, who spoke from the Pretoria CBD depot while waiting for a fuel tanker to arrive, said the reserves assisted them to transport between 10 000 and 12 000 daily commuters.
He said the City transported 25 000 commuters on a daily basis. Commuters were lucky to find buses operating, having gone to bus stops either out of desperation or simply because they had not seen the announcement
He said: “Luckily the City made an extra effort to avoid a total suspension of services.”
Last September, the City experienced shortage of fuel and grounded buses, which infuriated commuters.
The shortage was blamed on delays from a service provider who could not deliver diesel.
This was to the disappointment of the SA Municipal Workers Union, which criticised the City for purchasing only 29 000 litres per day while buses consumed at least 100 000 litres daily.
However, Mashigo told Pretoria News that the current shortage in fuel was a result of unforeseen technical difficulties on the migration from the old system to a new one, which affected a lot of the City’s payments, including fuel.
“It does not mean the new system is not working. We just experienced some delays which made us unable to process payments. Then we decided to revert to the old system, to enable us to make payment and not to compromise service delivery.
“That does not mean we are abandoning the system. We will be able to address those challenges that are there and create a back-up so that when it comes into operation it does not impact services negatively,” said Mashigo.
By midday, the City was still waiting for delivery of the fuel before the bus service could return to full capacity.
Pretoria News