The City of Tshwane wants to purchase its own vehicles as part of a plan to slowly abandon the use of hired vehicles costing the municipality millions of rands every year.
This is according to the MMC for Corporate and Shared Services, Kingsley Wakelin, who announced that with a combined budget of over R3,5 billion for the upcoming 2024/25 financial year, the City would support departments under his portfolio to perform optimally.
“Two of the most critical support tools are ICT and vehicles, and here the Shared Services Department has a R1,3 bn operating budget, with an additional R40 million to buy our own vehicles so that we can reduce the amount we spend on leased vehicles, which is budgeted at R255m,” he said.
The department will spend a further R120m on vital ICT infrastructure, which includes rolling out the latest SAP systems, most prominently SAP Ariba.
The systems, he said, will digitise and automate the entire supply chain management value system with the objective of making procurement more efficient and eliminating corruption opportunities.
Wakelin said: “No organisation can survive without investing in its people and Group Human Capital Management will have a budget of R553m, with R7,8m allocated to training and development and R4,2m going to bursaries.”
Group Property, which is another department under his portfolio, will receive R1,024 bn to focus on the management and maintenance of core buildings that house municipal employees.
“These must meet the required health and safety standards so that our employees can enjoy a proper environment to be productive in. While our rentals are high at a projected cost of R120m, our office optimisation strategy is slowly reducing this number by renovating our own buildings and exiting leases at private buildings,” Wakelin said.
In the next financial year, he said, the City aimed to make savings of over R10m through the renovation of the Midtown Building.
He said: “Many residents will have heard of the City’s recent Tshwane Ya Tima revenue-collection campaign victory at the Supreme Court of Appeals. This was thanks to the dedicated team at Group Legal and Secretariat Services. Their total budget allocation of R232m includes R103m for external legal services, but over the long term we aim to reduce this by building our own internal legal capacity.”
He said the Group Audit and Risk fulfils the vital function of internal audit and risk management and conducting forensic investigations so that fraud and corruption did not go unpunished.
“Out of a total budget of R155m, R15,2m will be allocated to supporting internal audits, while R20,5m will focus on resolving priority forensic investigations from previous years,”he said.
The Communication, Marketing and Events Department has a budget allocation of R94m for the next financial year.
Pretoria News