Owners of hundreds of scholar buses have accused the Gauteng Department of Education of short-changing them in a new contracting process.
The South Gauteng High Court’s Judge Edwin Molahlehi yesterday heard an application by eight operators who sought to be allowed to continue to render transport services when schools reopen next week.
The eight had 255 scholar buses which transported thousands of learners across the province.
They were part of bus operators contracted back in 2003, according to Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi’s counsel.
The contracts lapsed over a year ago and they were extended three times, for 120 days in each extension.
The bus operators bid for the new contracts in a tendering process that was open until March 5, 2022.
They believe they were short-changed because they never heard about the progress of the tendering process after bidding. “We’ve heard nothing,” Nazeer Cassim SC, their counsel, told Judge Molahlehi.
“All of my clients are saying, ‘we’ve bid before the closing date (and) we heard nothing till almost a year later when we heard through the grapevine that the successful bidders have been notified’. We don’t know who they are.”
Cassim said the operators wrote to the department earlier in March. “They reply and say, on the 7th of March, ‘the process is still ongoing. You will be notified’.
“We were never notified. On the 16th of March we complain that we now hear there are successful tenderers.”
Cassim said the department’s responses have been misleading and unhelpful. As a result, his clients resorted to court for an urgent application.
Lesego Montsho-Moloisane SC, counsel for Lesufi, challenged the urgency of the application. She asked Judge Molahlehi to strike the matter off the roll for lack of urgency.
The operators were aware for extensive periods that their contracts were coming to an end on March 31, Montsho-Moloisane said.
“The question is, was there any justification for the applicants to have waited until the very last moment?” she asked.
“Is there any ground for them to approach this court on urgency or to even seek an order that they should be allowed to carry on with such services?
“We submit that there are absolutely no grounds for urgency and for them to seek that these services be provided by them.”
She revealed Cassim’s clients were among the 645 entities that submitted the bids and that they were contracted in 2003.