THE municipality had a meeting with its fuel service provider following a recent shortage of fuel at its depots.
The metro asked its provider to look into the matter urgently as the impact of the shortage was serious. Some fire trucks, ambulances and metro police vehicles could not leave their depots as they were empty.
According to a metro spokesman the council is up to date in terms of the payment for the services rendered by the service provider. There is no outstanding amount, only the invoices for recent deliveries are being processed, the spokesman said.
The DA in Ekurhuleni said it was negligent in the extreme to fail to secure a steady supply of diesel and petrol for metro-owned vehicles across all departments.
According to them an anonymous staff member alerted DA councillor Heather Hart to the impending crisis.
In a statement issued the DA said since December last year, DA Councillor Bill Rundle had been raising his concern with the relevant officials because as far back as the end of last year, the party was receiving reports of problems with the supply of fuel to metro-owned vehicles.
In the early months of this year the lack of fuel was problematic for the parks, roads and waste departments, during which parks were becoming overgrown, potholes were not being fixed and waste was not being collected.
In January, stores, the heart of the metro’s supply chain management system in Edenvale, Kempton Park, Lethabong and Tembisa, were all without diesel. Regional managers had to try to shuffle vehicles to various stores in order to be able to refuel them. This has an effect on productivity and overtime when vehicles have to travel long distances just for fuel, Rundle said.
“More worrying is that now, emergency vehicles were directly affected with the lack of fuel reaching crisis point. This was not the first time that, nearing the end of the financial year, metro departments had been left scrambling to try and find fuel.
“The situation will not be resolved until July 1, the beginning of the new financial year. Even then, vehicles won’t be refuelled immediately while financial processes are put into place,” he added.
Hart said it was an utter disgrace that the metro could not get its supply chain management policy correct and properly streamlined in accordance with the country’s municipal finance laws.
