Executive Mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya, Deputy mayor and MMC for finance Eugene Modise photos by Dimakatso Modipa
The City of Tshwane has taken a decisive step toward restoring municipal control over core service delivery functions.
On Tuesday the Executive Mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya, Deputy mayor and MMC for finance Eugene Modise and the MMC for Corporate and Shared Services Kholofelo Morodi officially received a fleet of new cherry pickers and oversaw the reopening of the Pretorius Park fleet workshop.
This milestone forms part of the Administration’s broader strategy to reduce dependence on private contractors and rebuild the City’s internal technical and operational capacity.
The acquisition of municipal-owned cherry pickers is aimed at enabling City departments to carry out critical maintenance and repairs directly,without the delays and excessive costs associated with outsourcing.
For years, basic services in Tshwane were handed over to external contractors, often at enormous expense to ratepayers.
During this period, internal departments were left without the tools, personnel, or infrastructure to respond effectively to community needs.
The result was slower turnaround times, poor accountability, and deteriorating
service delivery.
The reopening of the Pretorius Park depot gives the City an operational hub to manage its growing fleet ensuring quicker response times, better control over resources, and improved transparency in the use of public funds.
The workshop was closed due to outsourcing of workshop services.
The reopening of this facility will enable the City to enhance fleet management capabilities, reduce downtime, and improve overall efficiency using own internal staff.
The Workshop will focus on Water & Sanitation and Energy & Electricity vehicles thereby reducing the turnaround time for repairs of vehicles servicing these two critical departments.
The handover of cherry pickers and the revival of the fleet workshop reflect a shift in focus away from private interests and toward public value.
These developments form part of a wider
effort to fix the fundamentals of service delivery—getting resources to the ground where they are most needed and ensuring communities receive reliable, dignified services.
Meanwhile, an elated City of Tshwane Mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya told Tshwane Talks that the cherry pickers are used for tree pruning activities and also by the electricity department in delivering services to the residents.
“One of the decisions that we have taken as the City of Tshwane is to reduce our reliance on contracted services and instead build internal capacity to deliver services and to this end we have reduced reliance on contracted services by 7% as indicated in our budget for the City of Tshwane,” she said.
“We must increase the number of equipment and tools of trade that we purchase as the City of Tshwane and the cherry pickers will be allocated to City officials and no outside contractors will come with cherry pickers to do work for the City, but what is important today is that we are reopening the Pretorius Park fleet depot which has been closed for over 6 years now because the person who was managing it went on pension and we have now decided that we must reopen it as we want to improve our turn-around time,” said the Mayor.
Some of the cherry Pickers fleet
“Some of our officials are reckless in the way they handle municipal vehicles and as a result some of the Municipal vehicles don’t even last for three years and we have also introduced a new vehicle-tracking system and another worrying factor is the time spent by our officials idling and indulging themselves at some Chisa Nyama outlets and this is what makes the community to fight against us because no one monitors them to ensure that they are where they are supposed to be at any given time,” she said.
She revealed that reckless City of Tshwane drivers will be subjected to disciplinary measures.
“We have already employed five mechanics who will be looking after the cherry pickers and I am excited to be part of this important milestone in the history of Tshwane,” remarked Deputy Mayor Eugene Modise regarding the reopening of the Pretorius Park fleet depot after a six-year hiatus.