Airports Company South Africa says contingency plans are being put in place to ensure that passenger movements at airports are not impacted by eminent public servants strike.
ACSA CEO Mpumi Mpofu says engagements with the South Africa Police Service as well as the affected departments like home affairs and health to ensure plans are in place to manage any eventualities.
Public servants look set to embark on a national strike on Thursday following a breakdown on wage negotiations.
ACSA says the strike may impact the public servants stationed at airports like home affairs officials.
CEO Mpumi Mpofu says plans are being made to minimise impact. “It’s basically the state of readiness to manage the strike to make sure that it does not affect passenger movements and ensuring that the designated areas for where they would stand. This came through yesterday in consultation with SAPS and others just to regularise, that’s the first part. The second part is as I speak to you now this morning we were engaged with the department of home affairs, health as to the likely impact of that because it’s the employees of those departments that are likely to participate or not.”
ACSA says plans are being put in place to ensure there is no repeat of the jet fuel shortage challenges experienced at OR Tambo international airport earlier this year as a result of the damage caused by floods in KwaZulu-Natal and later shortages experienced at Cape Town International Airport as a result of delays in deliveries.
Mpofu says, “The problem that we encountered was that there are two groups of majors that supplying one group because they were associated with SATREF ran out of fuel because of the licencing conditions, the other group was not willing to share with the other group, it is a complexity, what I mean by that is that it has forced us to review our licence conditions so that we hold the contingency reserves and we don’t depend on the solutions coming from the majors which is what the previous licence conditions had in place.”
Meanwhile, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula says the department will soon announce details on operationalising the decision to do away with Gauteng e-tolls announced in the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement.
He says the officials from the Gauteng government, National Treasury and Transport departments are working on finalising the details.
