Taxi Recapitalisation & Bus Rapid Transit: Department's updates; Passenger Rail Agency & Railway Safety Regulator programmes

Meeting report

Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) Presentation
Mr Lucky Montana, Group Chief Executive Officer, Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA), said the entity was created out of a 2004 Cabinet decision to consolidate passenger entities, and the process was completed in the 2008/09 financial year. The consolidation entailed the amalgamation of Metrorail, Shosholoza Meyl, Autopax (City to City and Translux) and Intersite Property Management. He said the strategic roadmap of PRASA could be summarised as firstly to establish and position itself during the first two years of its establishment, then to consolidate and form the backbone of public transport, before embarking on an integration and expansion drive from 2015 onwards. Mr Montana said the entity was faced with an investment backlog to complete its set objectives. He said currently PRASA was operating on an investment budget of between R300 and R355 million per annum instead of the desired R500 to R700 million per annum. He said this underinvestment had effects on the upgrading and acquisitions of fleet of coaches that PRASA was using.

Mr Montana highlighted that almost 40% of the fleet under the control of PRASA was older than 37 years, and this was worrying. The presentation also highlighted the proposed turnaround strategy that would take PRASA to new heights. Owing to this strategy, there had, during the last eighteen months, been an increase in passenger trips, increase in fare revenue, refurbishment of 709 coaches, completion of the Khayelitsha rail extension, and a government guarantee of R1.4 billion for recapitalisation of Autopax ahead of 2010. He said that multi-million rand projects were currently taking place, including the upgrading of stations such as Nasrec and Doornfontein, which was already 50% completed. Other major projects with which PRASA was engaged included a proposed fast line from Durban to Johannesburg.  Infrastructure maintenance was mentioned as a challenge and a priority.

There was a drive to develop various stations across the country into property portfolio hubs, something that would generate extra revenue for the entity. Safety issues were mentioned as one of the key priorities, with platform correction projects already under way. With regard to the rolling stock upgrades and technology enhancement, Mr Montana said the entity was busy with the process of phasing out of 5M coaches, and replacing them with 10M coaches. PRASA had committed itself to improving customer satisfaction levels with regard to the service provided. This would include drastically reducing rates of accidents that were caused by human error, and improving the frequency of trains to reach over 90% performance rate. He further said the entity was a mass mover of South Africans, making over 646 million trips per day throughout the country. On the Autopax front, Mr Montana said there were plans in place to invest more in luxury buses that would be used to complement the FIFA 2010 World Cup transport plans. He revealed that over 500 new buses were lined up to be bought before 2010, at a cost of R1.4 billion, which the government had guaranteed.

Railway Safety Regulator (RSR) Briefing
Mr Mosenngwa Mofi, Chief Executive Officer, Railway Safety Regulator, said the mandate of the Railway Safety Regulator (RSR) was to oversee and promote safe railway operations through appropriate support, monitoring and enforcement, guided by an enabling regulatory framework. He said RSR also had to comply with other pieces of legislation. When the RSR took over, there was a poor safety record in the country. The contributing factors included human factors, the poor state of infrastructure and rolling stock and poor practices and operating procedures.

Other areas that were highlighted as a cause for of concern, with regard to safety issues, were the state of ageing signaling and communications equipment, and scarcity of spares, and non-adherence to operating procedures, particularly when manual procedures were put in place and not followed. The ongoing vandalism and theft, particularly of copper cables and equipment containing copper, such as signaling transformers on trains, the critical shortage of skilled technical staff for maintenance, and new rail works had all played a role in compromising safety standards on the railway lines. Mr Mofi said the RSR’s research revealed that over 95% of level crossing accidents were caused by negligence on the part of road users.

The mushrooming of informal settlement was also identified as a contributing factor that led to fatalities, caused by illegal crossings, vandalism and theft of property. Over 40% of the rolling stock railway fleet was over 37 years old, and one third of those trucks were constantly out of service. The signaling system, which was at the end of its economic life, was also identified as a worrying factor. Mr Mofi said that more was being done on the ground to bring safety measures into line. This could be seen in the way the RSR was responding with refurbishing measures, such as putting in place warning signs, investing heavily in improving infrastructure, increasing the visibility of security personnel, and conducting occurrence investigations

Discussion
Mr S Farrow (DA) asked how PRASA was getting its funding from the National Treasury. He also wanted to know if the money it was getting from the government was enough to carry the expansion programmes. He asked Mr Montana to be as honest as possible in order that the Committee could know how and when to act in order to ensure that PRASA did have a steady flow of funds for in place.

Ms Sindi Mabaso-Koyana, Chief Financial Officer, PRASA, answered the question on the listing process. She said the PRASA board had approved the submission to the Department of Transport (DOT), and PRASA was waiting for an answer, which hopefully would give PRASA a Schedule 2 listing, which would make it able to draw up its own independent borrowing plan without having to go through the sometimes tedious route via the National Treasury. She said her task was to ensure that the balance restructuring was in good standing, in order that lenders were willing to consider extending loans to the entity.

Mr Farrow noted that there was a huge challenge with the network system. He said it was deeply worrying to hear that PRASA was investing such a large amount of money on repairing and maintaining the rail network, when most of that network belonged to another entity such as Transnet.

Mr Montana said that PRASA was sitting with an anomaly, which was created in 1989 when the first Legal Succession Transport Act was passed. He said during this period, an irrational sharing of assets resulted in Transnet being allocated most vital resources that it was now not even utilising to the maximum capacity. He said that PRASA was hoping that the Ministers of Transport and Public Enterprises would resolve that problem.

Ms E Hangana (ANC) also wanted to know why there was a lack of harmonious working relationships between different government departments. She cited an incident wherein the Department of Transport sued the Department of Human Settlements over a matter that the two departments could not resolve, which she regarded as a highly embarrassing situation.

Mr Montana said he was not aware of the specifics pertaining to this legal dispute. However, whenever PRASA was interacting with other government departments, it would be guided by the spirit of cooperative governance principles provided for by the Constitution.

Ms P Khunou (ANC) asked whether there was any integrated transport system that would be unveiled to supplement the FIFA 2010 event. She also asked whether PRASA was doing enough to attract new commuters through providing an even much better service in terms of cleanliness, security, efficiency and costs.

Mr Montana said he was worried that there was no coordination between different transport systems. He said it would be beneficial to the public to have an interlinked transport system, each sector of which complemented others, through feeding networks and other means. He said he was glad that the Honourable Minister of Transport Mr Sibusiso Ndebele was starting to share his vision, and there was a chance that the integrated transport plan in cities that were coordinated from one centre would be considered. He said the goal of providing quality transport solutions looked beyond 2010. However, PRASA had a bigger and important role to play during the world cup event.

Ms Khunou said it was worrying that the presentation made no mention of plans to revive railway lines in rural areas. She further asked whether, in view of the high costs of repairing and maintaining old trains, it was not viable simply to buy new coaches.

Mr Montana said the new rolling stock in which PRASA was investing had many advantages, including an extended lifespan and more advanced safety measures. He added that PRASA was ready to go on with the process of acquiring a new fleet of coaches, but that, in order for this process to be fully embarked on, financial institutions needed government to give a guarantee that in the event of any unforeseen event that may prevent PRASA from meeting its debt obligations, government would step in as a co-principal debtor.

Ms P Ngwenya-Mabila (ANC) also said it was worrying that some remote areas were being left out of PRASA’s development strategy. She said this approach was contrary to the ANC manifesto, which identified the issue of rural development as one of the five key priorities to be improved upon.

Mr Montana said he was pleased these questions were asked. PRASA was in interaction with government to find a way in which railway services could be expanded to reach even the more remote areas. PRASA had just completed a study in the province of Limpopo, looking particularly at the railway networks and how these could be improved to provide people in that particular province with a much better service. He said plans were under way to do the same review in other provinces.

Mr M De Freitas (DA) asked whether PRASA was going to have a railway line connecting commuters to the airport, particularly in the Western Cape. He also wanted to know if it had any plans to copy from international case studies on how to bolster the property profile by building world-class multi-purpose train stations, that would open new economic opportunities and generate extra revenue for PRASA.

Ms Ngwenya-Mabila said the premier class coaches were not easy to book, due to capacity issues. She said she was aware that the numbers of coaches was increased, but it was still necessary to book very far in advance.

Mr Montana responded that PRASA was trying hard to increase the premier class coaches, which were being preferred by most long distance travelers. He was glad to hear that most coaches were fully booked.

Ms Ngwenya-Mabila asked what plans PRASA had to address skills shortage. She asked specifically whether there were plans to offer bursaries and any form of financial assistance to students, who would in turn offer to work for PRASA when they finished studying.

Mr Sfiso Buthezeli, Board Chairperson, PRASA, noted that PRASA did have programmes in place to recruit the best students, and this included interacting with universities to provide funding of all kind to students who had a passion to make a contribution in making traveling by train a glamorous phenomenon. He noted that energy levels were very high and everyone was working to ensure that PRASA fulfilled its mandate to the benefit of all South Africans.

Mr Montana spoke about the Moloto rail corridor line, which would be built from Moloto in Mpumalanga to Pretoria. Last year, Cabinet had approved the project, which would cost R8.6 billion. He said this project would also seek to connect Gauteng and Sekhukhune land. He said there were a lot of discussions in various other provinces to ensure that rural communities were not left out.

Ms Hangana asked whether people were still allowed to cook and sell food in trains. She said those kind of activities were crucial as they provided a source of income and livelihood to many families.

Mr Buthelezi answered that cooking was no longer done in all trains, only on the Shosholoza one.

The Chairperson reiterated that the integrated government relations framework, together with the cooperative government policy would guide the efforts to resolve some of the tensions that were created by the ownership of railway lines between Transnet and PRASA.

The Chairperson commented that the presentations had not satisfactorily dealt with the issue of affirmative action. She added that she hoped that what PRASA was doing would not have the effects of wiping out the taxi industry from the transport sector.

Mr De Freitas said the presentation from the Railway Safety Regulator was not as convincing as the one from PRASA, and commented that there was not much said about the implementation timeframes for the new safety technology.

Mr Montana said there were plans in the pipeline to address these issues. It was likely that the high-speed Moloto project, the Gautrain project and the proposed high speed line between Durban and Johannesburg would be the first projects in which the issue of new technology would be benchmarked.

Ms Ngwenya-Mabila said she noted the number of fatalities caused by train accidents. She questioned what the RSR was doing to raise public awareness in order to minimise those fatalities. She also asked whether any form of compensation would be offered to individuals who were injured or killed.

The Chairperson commented that there was a lot of under spending on the money allocated to departments for skills training. She said it was now the time to re-look at how they were proceeding with matters, and time to start prioritising properly.

Mr Montana noted that sometimes accidents near railways lines were caused by people living too close to the lines, as this was the cheapest place to establish informal settlements.

Taxi Recapitalisation and Scrapping Administration: Department of Transport (DOT) briefing
Ms Kamantha Manila, Director: Taxi Recapitalisation Project Office, Department of Transport, said that in 2005/06, Cabinet had approved R7.7billion for the entire taxi recapitalisation project. This amount was to be split into R5 billion for scrapping and R2.2 billion for regulation of the programme. The initial arrangement for the programme was that the R7.7 billion would be further split into R1.1billion allocated over each year of a seven-year period. However, the prompt allocation of the first R1.1 billion did not take place as promised. During the 2006/07 financial year, the Department was allocated R352 million, increasing to R578 million in the 2007/08 financial year and R459 million for the 2008/09 financial year.

The total number of vehicles that were approved for scrapping reached a total of 135 894. Up to now, a total of 21 640 had been scrapped, leaving 114 254 vehicles still to be scrapped over the remaining five years of the project. The new annual scrapping target set over the remaining 5 years of the project stood at 22 850 vehicles per year. A few amendments were made in order to accommodate all the stakeholders. The 135 894 vehicles captured was a figure that was adjusted from the earlier figure of 100 000. The Cabinet also approved a consumer price index (CPI)-linked increase of the payout scrapping allowance, originally calculated at R50 000. There was also an increase in the budget allocation to R9.5 billion for the total of seven years.

There were a number of challenges identified. The first was the issue of funding and allocation. The pace and amount of funding that had been allocated so far fell too far short of what was reasonably expected, to scrap over 135 000 vehicles. Access to the law enforcement allowance had also been a major challenge. There was also the problem of vehicle owners not having access to loans needed to supplement the scrapping allowance that the government paid out. The National Credit Act (NCA) and the current financial recession had been identified as the two major impediments, with some operators saying that banks were turning them away, because they did not meet the criteria set by the NCA.

One of the regulations agreed on was the creation of the Scrapping Administration Agency (SAA), which would be established through a bidding process. This SAA would have offices in all nine provinces of South Africa. Its main purpose would be to champion the process of evaluating and overseeing the implementation of the scrapping and recapitalisation process. A bidding process was opened, and Sinai Consortium won the tender, at a ceiling price of R639,9 million. It was revealed that the South African National Taxi Council (SANTACO) had a 30% stake in the consortium that was awarded the tender to be the Taxi Scrapping Administrator (TSA)

Since the implementation of the Taxi Recapitalisation Programme in October 2006, a total of R1.137 billion had been paid out to scrapping. R630.7 million was allocated for the current financial year, of which a CPI index linked R54 300 would be paid out to taxi owners for their scrapping. An estimated 11 616 vehicles were expected to be scrapped in the remainder of the current financial year, putting the total figure of vehicles to be scrapped in the entire current financial year to 34 356.
 
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System Presentation
Ms Kibi Manana, Chief Director: Public Transport Strategy and Monitoring, Department of Transport, gave a detailed presentation on the Phase 1 progress update on the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRT) project that was being implemented in major South African cities. She told the Committee that a National Joint Working Group was established, which, in partnership with various other stakeholders, was engaging with the DOT to see to it that the processes ran as smoothly as possible. At the present, the stakeholders of the BRT were at the last stages of finalising the Memorandum of Agreement, which would capture all the details of how this project would be rolled-out.

In outlining the status of planning and implementation in major cities, Ms Manana said that currently the focus of the BRT projects was in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nelson Mandela Bay and Tshwane. Johannesburg, Cape Town and Tshwane were identified as the cities planning a full BRT implementation, whereas Nelson Mandela Bay was planning a partial BRT.

The vision and long-term strategy of the BRT was to have 85% of all residents within 1 kilometre of a rapid Public Transport (PT)network by 2010. Other objectives of the BRT were to extend operation hours to make it a 24 hour service, with frequencies of 5 to10 minutes intervals during peak times and 10 to 30 minutes during off-peak times. The need to have a safer, reliable transport system that accommodated citizens with special needs, such as wheelchair access, would always be the driving force behind the BRT system.   

In Johannesburg, it was revealed that the starter service was launched on 30 August 2009 at Westgate Station. The DOT felt there was a need to launch the starter service before implementing the full project, since this was a very complex project that needed a first launching to allow for an opportunity to test the systems, buses, stations built for the process, and to be able to iron out any challenges. The process also included recruiting and training drivers and other workers who would be taking part.

Other accessory services present at the BRT stations included three security guards, two cleaners, one cashier, one station ambassador and two volunteers, all of whom were recruited  from the affected operators and surrounding communities. The ticket fare structure ranged from R3 to R8, depending on the route and distance. Ticket sale points were spread across the entire city, and buses had ticket validating machines, with independent inspectorate personnel ensuring that all passengers were in possession of valid tickets when on board.

Ms Manana said the overall impression from the BRT Rea Vaya launch  in Johannesburg was that people were generally excited about the launch. She said DOT also believed that there were high levels of motivation from staff; this despite one shooting incident that was currently under investigation. Ms Manana did say, however, that there were challenges and frustrations recorded due to boarding queues, which she believed could be alleviated by frequency improvements. Other good aspects observed during the Rea Vaya launch were that people were happy to travel in clean, quiet, smooth-riding buses. This also included immaculate, visible and aesthetically pleasing stations, which were secure, accessible and well ventilated.

Some interesting facts emerged on the Rea Vaya during the presentation. Ms Manana said over 16 000 passengers were transported by the buses per day, generating revenue of about R70 000 per day. Each bus made up to 151 trips per day, covering about 5 100 kilometers per day. There were nine breakdowns in total, and five of them were due to tyre failure. Third party accidents recorded thus far were four, all being minor and numerous scratches.

In other cities, the progress of Phase 1 was not as impressive as was the case in Johannesburg. The City of Cape Town was set to implement its Phase 1 in May 2010. The plan was to have 25 stations, 139 feeder stops, and 156 vehicles, with capacity to do over 115 000 passenger trips a day. It also emerged that eight taxi associations and two bus companies would be directly affected by the BRT, and negotiations were currently in progress to ensure that all the stakeholders reached consensus on the implementation of the project. Challenges faced by the City included discussions currently taking place between DOT and the National Treasury to secure additional funding to complete the full Phase 1 in the time set.

The Nelson Mandela Bay, which planned to implement a partial BRT, was set to launch its citywide network project by 2010. The City further planned to incorporate all current and bus operations into a single network which would comprise of five contract packages aiming to transport over 40 000 passenger trips per day.

The city of Tshwane was also planning to kick-start its work in progress by 2010, with 2011 set as deadline for the full operation of Phase 1. The City also planned to create a 68 kilometre full BRT network, linking Mabopane to Mamelodi, via the CBD and Menlyn. 58 vehicles to service 17 stations were set to be purchased, with over 40 000 passenger trips per day expected to be made. Despite the plans to have BRT fully implemented in 2011, the City of Tshwane would be ready to provide an event-specific service as part of the overall 2010 FIFA World Cup transport plan.

Progress in other cities was reported to be at operational plan phases. Those cities included Buffalo City, Mbombela, Ekurhuleni, Ethekwini, Mangaung, and Msunduzi. Rural district implementation of the BRT was on course to begin in the 2010-11 financial year.
 
Discussion
Ms N Khunou (ANC) thanked both presenters for a well balanced presentation. She however raised concern about the issue of costs to be incurred by the public in using the BRT buses. She said that she understood BRT to be a heavily government-subsidised project, but nonetheless, in the presentation, the figures given as the costs of boarding the buses did not show in any way that this was a subsidised transport system.

Ms Manana said the fares charged were aligned to what was being charged by other operators in the city. Even though she agreed that the service was still heavily subsidised, she did concede that there were signs that prices would go up to match the level of quality of service that would be afforded.

Ms Khunou said she was not convinced that proper consultations were done with all relevant parties, especially consultations with some of the taxi operators.

Mr Farrow also said he was not convinced that the commuter organisations were consulted as part of the key stakeholders in the process. He said he was aware of one big lobby group in Cape Town that could have a lot of influence in the implementation of the BRT, and it was worrying that the presentation made no mention of those commuter organisations.

Ms Manana said the Department had done everything in its power to engage every stakeholder in this process. She said that at times blame lay with the leaders of organisations to which some of the taxi operators belonged. Sometimes, information was not filtering through to the people on the ground due to a communication breakdown on the part of taxi operators, and the Department could not be blamed for not engaging those kinds of stakeholders.

The Committee Chairperson took issue with Ms Manana’s response regarding the issue of prices and subsidies. As far as she was concerned, BRT was supposed to have been a project that would not only improve the quality of transport system in South Africa, but should also come at a very affordable cost. She said it would be hard to swallow the news that BRT would become too expensive to be within the reach of most South Africans. Already, transport fares were high, and any plans to increase these should be opposed. She said it was not enough to say the public would only benefit from BRT in terms of having access to fast, reliable and efficient public transport that did not meet their burden in terms of costs. She asked Ms Manana to explain the DOT understanding of the subsidies.

Ms Manana said the government subsidies came in two forms, operational subsidies and capital subsidy. She said the operational subsidy would be meant to benefit the bus operators who would eventually own the project when it was finally handed over to them, whereas the capital subsidy programme benefited the public directly.

Ms Khunou was concerned that the buses that would be used were not manufactured in South Africa. Considering the distance that these buses were expected to travel each day, she asked whether there would be enough skills and resources in the country to maintain these buses effectively. She also asked what the lifespan of these buses was estimated to be.

Ms Manana answered that the buses were imported from other countries, particularly from Brazil, but most of what was imported were components, which were then assembled in South Africa. She said that the model of most buses would be the Marcopolo, which was not new in the South African market, and most of the repairs would be done here in South Africa.

Ms Khunou said, in regard to the TRP, that some of the terminology and figures were very confusing. She asked whether the DOT had drawn up a proper plan of how it was going to use the money allocated for this project. In the absence of such a plan, it would be extremely difficult to implement the programme properly. She asked Ms Manila to explain what she meant by “affected stakeholders” in her presentation.

Ms Manila said the DOT, as the main driver of the project, was involved at every level of planning of the implementation of the BRT, with various other stakeholders. She said she was convinced that if the Department had allocated the money that it had promised originally, namely the R1.1 billion over seven years, the process would have proceeded quite far. She reiterated that the challenges confronted with regard to budgeting had nothing to do with a lack of a properly structured plan. DOT had drawn up and submitted a plan to Cabinet, which led to a total R7.7 billion being approved.

She said that all the bus or taxi operators who operated on a route where BRT would reach, were classified as affected parties, and were thus included in the terms she had used in the presentation.

Mr De Freitas questioned and said he was worried about the fact that SANTACO had a 30% ownership stake in the consortium that won the bid to operate as the TSA, which he believed could cause major conflicts of interest.

Ms P Ngwenya-Mabila (ANC) asked how many civil society organisations took part in this process and what their contribution had been. She further raised concern that in Mpumalanga for instance, she was only aware of only one scrapping site, which was very far away from other areas in the province.

Ms Manila noted that the Department tried to engage all relevant sectors of society. She said that currently the civil society stakeholders included South African Taxi and Allied Workers Union, South African National Commuter Organisation, Gauteng Commuter Organisation, South African Disability Alliance and Congress of South African Trade Unions.

Mr Farrow (DA) said he was privileged to have witnessed the launch of the Rea Vaya project in Johannesburg. However, his biggest worry was the lack of coordination between provinces, municipalities and various other agencies. He was concerned that a trend was developing whereby none seemed to be talking to each other and each was doing its own thing, leading to duplication of roles and crossing over of responsibilities.

Ms Manana said she noted Mr Farrow’s comment about the need for coordination and could not agree more with him on the importance of such coordination. She promised Mr Farrow that she would take up his concerns with relevant officials when they did a review of the process.

Mr De Freitas asked what formula was being used to allocate guards to particular stations. He said some stations had more security personnel than other. Closely attached to that, he asked for more clarity on the role of ambassadors and volunteers that would be used at some of the BRT stations.

Ms Manana said she did not know what the formula was behind the allocation and distribution of security personnel. She suggested that perhaps that question could be better answered by officials from the City, when they come to brief the committee.

She said ambassadors would be people who would be posted to various stations for the purposes of assisting commuters with information such as where to buy tickets, where to find the buses and other logistical information in general. She said volunteers would support ambassadors.

Mr De Freitas said he was worried about the feasibility of rolling out the BRT project in other cities. When looking at the effort and resources put behind the preliminary preparations for the Rea Vaya in Johannesburg, and the time taken, he felt that there was little chance that other cities were on schedule to complete the BRT before 2010.

Ms Manana said it was true that other cities were lagging behind in terms of putting infrastructure to support BRT for 2010. She said there would be some temporary interventions that would be carried out to ensure that the system worked during 2010. Some of those interventions would include putting in place event-specific infrastructure to service the FIFA World Cup during 2010.

Ms Ngwenya-Mabila said she had overheard that the SAA, in addition to offices in the provinces, had mobile units that were in operation to facilitate a speedy and efficient process of spearheading the TRP. She was concerned whether these mobile units really existed on the ground. She had never seen one in her constituency in Mpumalanga, and was aware that people were still queuing in offices to get their papers processed, which was of great inconvenience to most of the operators.

Ms Manila said as far as she was aware there were mobile units present in all the provinces. Through these, an operator could file the papers and all necessary documentation without any major inconvenience, except perhaps at the stage when the vehicle had to be taken in to be scrapped at the final stages of the process. She said there were two types of mobile units, one of which would be present in each of the nine provinces, moving around distributing forms and collecting them for processing. The other mobile unit would be moving from province to province, depending on where it was needed the most, for the physical scrapping. She said there were only two of these mobile units for the entire country.

Ms Ngwenya-Mabila said she was aware of the reports that the DOT had under spent its budget allocation for the 2006/07 financial year. She asked what the reasons were for that under spending. In her view, a department that under spent its budget could not turn around and claim that it could not implement most of its programmes through lack of funding.

Mr Furrow agreed, saying that it was fairly obvious that the main reason why the National Treasury had cut the budget was due to under spending.

Mr Farrow expressed his concern that the taxi recapitalisation process was not done quickly enough. If this trend continued, it would result in a cycle where, but the time the last old vehicle was scrapped, the new replacements would themselves be at the stage of needing to be scrapped, which would set up a vicious cycle that the Department could not hope to address.

Ms Ngwenya-Mabila further said that the presentation had mentioned that some of the operating licencing boards lacked capacity. Based on what she had seen in these offices, she was not sure that there was lack of capacity and it was more likely that the problem was lack of supporting mechanisms.

Adoption of previous Minutes
Because there was no properly constituted quorum, the Committee was unable to adopt the minutes of the previous meeting. The Committee Chairperson asked the Whips to act strongly on members who were not attending the full Committee meetings.

The meeting was adjourned