New Wonderboom fixers hail from the realm of state capture

Airport has no budget for trio’s R12 million consultancy fee

- Susan Puren

TSHWANE METRO IS SCRAMBLING TO find R12 million not budgeted for, to pay yet another consult-ant appointed to help Wonder-boom National Airport “return to financial viability”.

Professional Aviation Services (Pty) Ltd (PAS), the private entity that had managed the airport for the past two years, parted company with Wonderboom at the end of last month.

This, after a last desperate, yet unsuccessful attempt to gain the backing of the airport tenants by asking them to write letters of support to the metro council. This, after a last desperate, yet unsuccessful attempt to gain the backing of the airport tenants by asking them to write letters of support to the metro council.

Tshwane appointed and subsequently renewed the contract of PAS three times, each time on the back of a request to deviate from supply chain management regulations. The Municipal Finance Management Act only allows a municipality to deviate in exceptional cases such as emergencies, where it is impractical or impossible for official procurement processes to take place.

With PAS in charge the once well-run airport on the outskirts of the capital was downgraded in November from Category 5 to Category 2 status because of non-compliance with aviation laws. This happened barely three months after PAS’s fee was controversially increased by more than 300%.

On the very same day Wonderboom was downgraded, Tshwane Mayor, Steven Mokgalapa and MMC for Roads and Transport Sheila Senkubuge, announced that the airport would be commercialised, with Ntiyiso Consulting appointed as the transactional advisor. (Mokgalapa and Senkubuge recently made headlines when an audio clip of them allegedly having sex in her office, went viral on social media. Senkubuge has since resigned after it became known that she was not a South African citizen, when she became the MMC in 2016.)