Capital city claims Fidelity Securefire and the Sinoville Firefighting Association are contravening statutory laws.
Tshwane Metro appears to have been part of the bungling of a challenge to its court application to curb the allegedly illegal operations of private firefighting services within the municipal area, the High Court in Pretoria has found.
The City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality Emergency Services (CTMM) lodged an application in the High Court seeking an interdict against Fidelity Securefire (Pty) Ltd and the Sinoville Firefighting Association to immediately cease all operations, functions and/or activities defined as services in terms of the Fire Brigade Services Act.
The city alleges Fidelity Securefire and the Sinoville Firefighting Association are contravening statutory prescripts regarding the rendering of firefighting services in the area of the CTMM’s jurisdiction.
In seeking this relief, the CTMM’s chief of emergency services alleged that the CTMM had the support of both the national and Gauteng departments of cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) as “co-functionaries”.
This main application brought by the CTMM is still pending.
However, Sinoville Firefighting Association’s attorneys in October 2024 challenged the authority of Motsoeneng Bill Attorneys to act on behalf of the CTMM and the national and Gauteng Cogta departments.
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The Sinoville Firefighting Association launched the interlocutory application seeking an order that the purported power of attorney for Motsoeneng Bill Attorneys to act on behalf of the applicants in the main application be struck out and the entire application by the CTMM dismissed as far as it concerned the association.
Judge Norman Davis refused the relief sought by Sinoville Firefighting Association in its interlocutory application.
However, Judge Davis said it is abundantly clear that the proof of an actual mandate of Motsoeneng Bill Attorneys has been conducted in an unsatisfactory and haphazard fashion.
“The CTMM appears to be part and parcel of this bungling,” added the judge.
He said it is clear the initial response to Sinoville Firefighting Association’s challenge to the authority of Motsoeneng Bill Attorneys to act on behalf of the CTMM “falls short of the requirements”.
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Mandate
However, Judge Davis said the court is satisfied that Motsoeneng Bill Attorneys had been mandated to act on behalf of the CTMM in this manner, but the same could not be said for their purported authority to act on behalf of the national and Gauteng Cogta departments.
“Although most of the evidence relating to the mandate of the Motsoeneng Bill Attorneys was only produced after the launch of the main application, it would serve no practical purpose, once it has been determined that they may act on behalf of the CTMM, to relaunch the application.
“No real prejudice has been suffered by Sinoville [Firefighting Association] as a result of this, and proceedings have been pended pending finalisation of this interlocutory application, and to require a re-launching of the main application, would simply amount to a waste of time and costs,” he said.
Judge Davis awarded costs against CTMM and Motsoeneng Bill Attorneys, stating they can debate among themselves the apportionment of liability for those costs.
He found the repeated attacks on Sinoville Firefighting Association and its legal representatives in opposition to “the justifiable testing of Motsoeneng Bill Attorney’s mandate unbecoming”.
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Punitive cost order
“When this unbecoming attack is combined with the haphazard proof of the mandate, I find, in the exercise of the court’s discretion, that it justifies a punitive cost order,” he said.
Judge Davis said the unsuccessful defiance of the lack of authority to act on behalf of the national and Gauteng Cogta departments “must be for the account of Motsoeneng Bill Attorneys”.
The Tshwane Metro said in June this year it has not adopted any resolution to outsource its fire services, nor has it entered into service level agreements with any private providers.
It stressed the Fire Brigade Services Act stipulates that any fire service operating outside a municipality must obtain formal designation from the relevant provincial authority.
“None of the private fire services currently operating in Tshwane – including Fire Ops SA, Fidelity Securefire (Pty) Ltd, Sinoville Firefighting Association and Laudium Disaster Management, has obtained such designation from the Gauteng MEC for Cogta, as required by law.
“These illegal operations present numerous challenges,” it said.
The Tshwane Metro on Thursday reacted to criticism about it allegedly refusing assistance from private firefighting services during a fire at a tyre storage site in Rosslyn over the weekend.
It said the city has a standing memorandum of understanding (MoU) with AfriForum that outlines areas of cooperation in specific circumstances but, in this particular incident, Tshwane Emergency Services had full capacity and ample resources to independently manage the firefighting operation.
The Tshwane Metro added that contrary to claims made by the Sinoville Firefighting Association, the firefighting at the site was conducted and the fire was fully extinguished by the Tshwane Emergency Services’ teams without external firefighting intervention.
This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.
