Gauteng transport department facing over 600 litigation cases

The Gauteng department of roads and transport has a total of 605 active legal cases against it.

These are cases captured as at September 30 2017 which involve letters of demand‚ summons or notice of motions received.

This was revealed in a report discussed in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) in the Gauteng legislature on Friday.

The report further showed that the total contingent liability of the department stood at over R718-million as at September 30 2017.

A contingent liability is a potential liability that may occur‚ depending on the outcome of an uncertain future event‚ for example a matter before the court.

The committee expressed concern that there was no consequence management within the department which could prevent people from repeating mistakes.

Gauteng Scopa chair Mbongeni Radebe was also not pleased at the late submission of responses of the department.

“We sent questions to all departments and gave them a deadline of October 17. Other departments responded but this department only responded on Monday‚” Radebe said.

The department admitted to the committee in writing that it did not conduct any recent study to determine the actual number of subsidised routes‚ kilometres and trips for the bus company subsidised by the department. Instead it relied on historical information as contained in the original contract.

“Annual projections were based on historical information from previous financial years. However‚ the department has contracted CSIR to conduct proper transport surveys on the subsidised bus services‚ which will address the above mentioned challenges‚” the department said.

The department manages 34 bus contracts in Gauteng on a budget of about R2-billion.

This matter has been red-flagged by the Auditor-General for three financial years.