Independent Newspapers
Durban’s former city manager Michael Sutcliffe. Photo: Nqobile Mbonambi
Durban – Durban’s former city boss, Michael Sutcliffe, has entered the Virginia Airport fray, saying it would take years for the site to be developed because of the complexities around the airport’s location.
Airport operators have been battling for more than a year to get new leases from eThekwini Municipality. This followed city manager S’bu Sithole’s reneging on a council agreement that operators be issued with 10-year leases.
“I don’t want to get into a debate about this, but the best decision for that land, when I was city manager, was that for at least five to 10 years we should allow the leases to continue while we explored all the other options,” Sutcliffe said.
In an interview in which he covered a host of issues, Sutcliffe explained that, after Lanseria Airport in Joburg, Virginia had been the most frequently used commercial airport in the country and a resource for the province.
The final report his team prepared for the council at the end of his 10-year tenure said it would take seven or eight years to do the environmental impact assessment and devise a development proposal.
Thereafter the city would need to put the development proposal out to tender.
“The point is disposing of that land is going to take anything up to 10 years and the final report… to council looked at that,” he said.
The leases of operators and businesses, which include a pilots’ association, three aircraft maintenance companies, five flight schools and 13 charter businesses, expired in March last year.
A council resolution, adopted in October 2011, said the city should begin a process of negotiation with Dube TradePort around the possible relocation of operators to King Shaka International Airport.
But Sutcliffe said that general aviation was different from commercial aviation and the situation needed to be handled carefully as no airport could have the same runway being used for commercial and general aviation.
It was rumoured that the city was looking at a public-private partnership development for the site, but Sutcliffe said the city would have to go out to tender and the process would take a couple of years.
“I don’t know what public-private partnership you could do there simply because the public side of that partnership would have to be something like municipal buildings, and we don’t need any more municipal buildings. I don’t know what the proposal is or if there is a proposal,” he said.
DA eThekwini chief whip Sharon Hoosen urged Sithole to respond to questions relating to his involvement in the now-infamous Virginia Airport lease scandal.
She said the ANC did not want to provide surety to businesses and save hundreds of jobs by keeping the Virginia Airport lease agreements because this “does not suit the ANC’s agenda of cronyism through illicit business deals”.
The Mercury
