A Kirkwood road upgrade has stalled for months, putting on hold all driver’s licence testing in the area.
This as the contractor, Omega Civils, stopped working on the site and has applied to be liquidated.
The Sundays River Valley municipality often used the road to test learner drivers.
The road was meant to be finished in early 2018 but is still incomplete.
The traffic department has since been unable to take any bookings for driver’s licence tests.
Sundays municipal manager Sidney Fadi said Omega Civils had filed for liquidation in December.
“This delay definitely affects the traffic department’s income because there is no money coming in from people who want to pass their licence and the municipality also gets a certain percentage of that.
“This results in customers being lost to us who may not return to us again because the dates have been pushed so many times,” Fadi said.
The road under construction covers Aqua Park, Bersig and certain areas of the town of Kirkwood.
This is the route used by the traffic department for testing.
Fadi said he could not blame the contractor only, because the municipality was meant to receive R150m in funding over three years from the office of the premier as part of the small town revitalisation programme.
“Initially we were meant to receive R50m [for the year] but we only received R30m.
“This means when we started the project, we started with less than we had anticipated and had to rearrange our priorities based on our budget.”
Fadi said about R29m was spent on the project but because he was not at the office at the time, he could not say exactly how much was paid to Omega Civils.
“We were made aware in December that Omega Civils was going to be liquidated so we had to make alternative plans,” Fadi said.
A municipal employee, who did not want to be named, said the municipality was waiting on a final court liquidation date for the municipality’s insurance to pay out for delays caused by the liquidation.
“Financially, this doesn’t affect the municipality because we’re covered.
“All the material that was bought for constructing the road is sitting with us; we own it and we’ve still got money but all that we are waiting for is to appoint another contractor to finish the job,” the worker said.