Cape Town - The South African Local Government Association (Salga) has once again rejected the National Land Transport Amendment Bill as unconstitutional and cautioned that the bill should not be passed as is or there would be consequences.
Salga’s expert on the bill, Unathi Mntonintshi, was making a presentation to the legislature’s standing committee on mobility, which held public hearings on the bill on Tuesday night.
The purpose of the bill is to amend the National Land Transport Act, including providing for certain powers of provinces to conclude contracts for public transport services; to expand the powers of the national Transport Minister to make regulations and introduce safety measures.
Mntonintshi said that when the original process started, Salga was given the opportunity to comment on it, but their comments were not taken into account and neither were other crucial comments made by the City.
Salga and the City were worried that among other issues, the bill could potentially compromise the prerogative of municipalities to set out their developmental agenda, through the Integrated Development Plan, as provided for in the Constitution.
When their comments were ignored, both organisations wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa to raise their concerns with him as the final arbiter. The president agreed with them that these were issues of concern and sent the bill back to Parliament.
In his letter to Parliament, Ramaphosa said Section 11 of the existing act set out the respective responsibilities of the three spheres of the government, but that “Clause 7 of the bill seeks to amend that section and doing so will alter the statutory responsibilities of the three spheres of government.”
On Tuesday Mntonintshi said: “This bill has no direct input from Salga or the City in spite of these organisations being the reason the bill was sent back to the National Assembly by the president.”
He said that there had also been no consultation with the national Transport Department.
Mntonintishi said Salga appreciated the view that the review process could not be thrown “wide open” but he argued the process should not exclude the two parties whose views led to the review in the first place.
“The definition of narrow consultation cannot exclude Salga and the City. If changes are not made, Salga reserves its rights to any form of course of action to ensure that the desired changes occur,” Mntonintishi said.
In their presentation, the national Department of Transport said as it stood, the Bill left no flexibility to the provinces in the provision of powers to conclude contracts for public transport services, even with specific municipalities.
The Golden Arrow Bus service argued that the amended Bill would interfere with the vested rights which they have in terms of their operating licences, and as such would amount to an arbitrary deprivation of property.