No patrol vehicles for JMPD, says fleet management company

The Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department's patrol vehicles are off the road due to the absence of a “required interim fleet appointment”, says Afrirent Fleet management company.

This comes after the contract with the company expired at the end of October.

Afrirent said it wrote a letter to the city's executive seeking to address the absence of a working/contractual relationship.

“Since the expiry of the contract, Afrirent has acted in good faith, we have been very patient with the city and responsive to the challenges faced by the city by keeping the vehicles running. However, our lawyers have advised that we are in serious contravention of the Municipal Finance Act and Supply Chain regulations,” the company wrote.

As a result, all vehicles operating in the 12 user departments and entities are grounded effective midnight on Wednesday, November 12.

“As stated by our lawyers in clause 7.1 of the letter referred to, our formal appointment with the city expired at the end of October 2022. Subsequent to that, engagements by Afrirent to resolve the same (issue) have been futile, including promises by the city to revert to Afrirent with a consideration for a price escalation by Monday, November 21.”

In a letter TimesLIVE has seen, the rental company CEO, Senzo Tsabedze, says that to mitigate the risks arising from the situation and the resultant financial and reputational exposure they face, they have decided:

• All user departments are requested to safely park all vehicles in designated depots and municipal entities.
• All buses used for the transportation of Pikitup staff will be suspended and will not be collecting staff from designated collection points and depots.
• All ad hoc vehicles used in the food parcel delivery project will not be available to perform deliveries.

Afrirent said: “It is regrettable that it must come to this, we unfortunately find it difficult to operate in an environment where key decisions cannot be made about matters of such importance.”

A week ago, TimesLIVE reported that car rental firm Avis had confiscated about 2,500 vehicles from the City of Johannesburg’s fleet. The vehicles were used by Johannesburg metro police department in operations such as highway patrols and by the city's water department.

TimesLIVE

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