All safety precautions were taken to ensure the roadworthiness of SA Roadlink buses, the company said on Thursday.
Chairperson Allen Reddy said all SA Roadlink buses were tested at government test centres and certified roadworthy before the festive season began.
This, in the wake of a crash in KwaZulu-Natal in which 11 people died when a bus collided with two cars on Tuesday.
Reddy was speaking following the withdrawal of the national bus operator's licence to operate in KwaZulu-Natal on Wednesday.
The bus involved in the accident on Tuesday was certified roadworthy before the accident, and was retested after the crash with no faults found, said Reddy.
"We are 100% sure the bus was in a roadworthy condition."
"We have not received legal notification from the office of the MEC [KZN Transport MEC Bheki Cele], and thus it is business as usual," Reddy said.
The company's buses would still be able to operate in the rest of the country's eight provinces.
The decision has been welcomed by the South African Transport and Allied Workers' Union as a "long overdue" disciplining of private bus operators.
KwaZulu-Natal transport department spokesperson Nonkululeko Mbatha said the department was handling the matter of legal notice and representation "accordingly".
At a press conference in Johannesburg on Thursday, Reddy and SA Roadlink spokesperson Sam Fidelis said they would hold talks with Cele in Pietermaritzburg on Friday.
Reddy said at the briefing that the bus which crashed was certified roadworthy beforehand and no negligence on the company's part was found in subsequent tests.
He added that SA Roadlink owned a "state-of-the-art" depot in City Deep, Johannesburg, which carried out safety checks on coaches, including brake testing.
Responding to the allegations that most of the bus was made of fibreglass, Reddy said it was South African Bureau of Standards approved.
"The buses are used throughout the world and are state-of-the-art."
After meeting taxi industry bosses on Monday, Cele said all public transport vehicles - taxis, minibus taxis and buses - caught speeding, overloaded and unroadworthy would be confiscated and impounded.
"We won't just issue a ticket, we will arrest the driver and impound the vehicles," he said.
- SAPA

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