On Thursday, July 6, the JB Marks Local Municipality in Potchefstroom received eight branded traffic vehicles, some of which were brand new cars and others from the old unbranded fleet.
The Municipality started buying vehicles in 2021, although they were not branded.
The fleet is meant to overcome challenges faced by municipal employees, who once complained about a lack of vehicles and indicated that some have taken forever to be serviced.
The Executive Mayor of JB Marks Local Municipality in the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District, Gaba Thithiba ka Qhele, said this was a joyous moment for them because working with unbranded vehicles has been a challenge.
"Since our inception in this administration, we have been pushing for the branding of our vehicles so that our community can see them visible enough when the officials are enforcing the law.
We have set aside R20 million from our internal funds and additional grants of R22 million from the Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG), and today's fleet is the first. We are looking forward to getting 33 branded traffic vehicles in the current financial year to attend to service delivery issues in general," he said.
ka Qhele further said they are not only focusing on traffic vehicles, since they still need to terminate contracts with private service providers.
"We used to have two vehicles in the electricity and engineering departments, which gave us a huge challenge in providing services for our people. I can proudly say that two months ago, this was something of the past because we managed to add five vehicles to that department.
"Our aim and priority as the municipality is to have enough capacity to do the work on our own without outsourcing, but we will still outsource from our local service providers when we are faced with a challenge that needs us to, especially in the waste management department. When our trucks go for service, we will recommend service providers to come and help to give the services to our communities," he said.
