Cape Town – The Khayelitsha Development Forum (KDF) is demanding the City find an interim administrator to run the embattled MyCiTi N2 Express which has been at a standstill since last year.
This after the City said subject to ongoing negotiations, the N2 Express service may be reinstated around May next year.
The service was halted in May last year when the City failed to reach an agreement over its operation before the contract with the current shareholders, including the Golden Arrow Bus Service (Gabs), Codeta and Route 6 Taxi Association, lapsed.
The service has since been suspended, affecting thousands of Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain residents who depended on it to travel into the city for work, and back.
Earlier this year, stakeholders Codeta, Mitchells Plain’s Route Six and Golden Arrow Bus Services (Gabs), including all three spheres of government, started a mediation process in an attempt to break the impasse so that a solution for the restart of the service could be found.
Codeta who had expressed its desire to run the service as the standalone vehicle operator as it had been planning to approach the Western Cape High Court last year accusing Gabs of holding a monopoly on the N2 Express value chain and showing disregard for contractual arrangements.
Mayoral committee member for transport, Felicity Purchase said Codeta withdrew the matter three months ago. She said negotiations with the three operating parties to jointly provide the service were ongoing.
“If we succeed, the service could be operating soon. A mediator appointed by the three spheres of government is also making a great effort in bringing the operating parties together to address their concerns.
“However, we are also busy preparing a Request for Proposal, or tender document, for advertising for the resumption of the N2 Express service should the negotiations not succeed.
’’Should the negotiations with the existing operating parties fail, the City will have to pursue the tender route. The latter can take a few months to conclude, safe to say in which case the N2 Express service will not be reinstated before May 2021,” said Purchase.
KDF chairperson Ndithini Tyhido said the current state of public transportation in Khayelitsha was a devastating blow to the economy of the township and an attack on the livelihoods of the poor.
“The City is just playing games with poor people because the longer the delay the longer it pushes people back. There is totally no need to further inconvenience people.
’’We don’t understand why everything must stop during negotiations, it just doesn’t make sense economically.
“That is why we are now demanding the city to engage with the parties and come to an agreement about an interim administrator to run the service,” said Tyhido.
Codeta’s lawyer, Barnabas Xulu, did not respond to questions by deadline.
Cape Times