Transport Portfolio Committee Report on Oversight visit to KwaZulu-Natal, North West & Eastern Cape

This premium content has been made freely available

Transport

17 January 2012
Chairperson: Ms N Bhengu (ANC)
Share this page:

Meeting Summary

The Committee discussed some of the observations and recommendations in the Committee Report on the oversight visit to KwaZulu-Natal, North West and Eastern Cape in August 2011 but deferred adoption. Some matters needed to be followed up on. The Committee agreed that it was better to focus on only one province per oversight visit. They planned to visit the Eastern Cape the following week. The Committee would follow up on the main objectives of the study tour which was that policy guiding road infrastructure development by Provincial Departments should be guided by the need to marry infrastructure development with socio-economic development. The current policy stated that a gravel road in the rural area could only be upgraded to black top if a certain number of cars used that road daily. They needed a policy that talked to transport being defined as the heartbeat and facilitator of economic development as opposed to road transport infrastructure informed by the number of cars on that road. The Committee said they should do away with allocating budgets according to population statistics but rather allocate them according to backlog and resource needs otherwise poor provinces would remain poor. That would assist in job creation and minimise the movement of people from rural to urban areas. The Committee would aim to influence budget allocation in terms of the backlog and this would go a long way in reducing poverty in South Africa.

The Chairperson said it was crucial that the Committee facilitate a workshop with Provincial Departments to discuss the issues raised in the report and to get feedback. Another observation was the appointment of consultants for planning and design because in China planning and designing was done by Government employees. There was no need to appoint private consultants.

The adoption of the Committee Programme was deferred to a later date because the Committee had received a memo from the House Chairperson asking it to adjust the programme. The Committee needed to identify areas of focus for the current year and include these in the programme. The Committee adopted all outstanding minutes from 12 April 2011 to 22 November 2011.


Meeting report

Committee Report on Oversight visit to KwaZulu-Natal, North West and Eastern Cape
The Chairperson asked members to go through the report and its recommendations.

Mr Suka suggested the Committee staff should compile committee reports within a week of an oversight visit to avoid backlogs because the two reports before them were from July and August 2011. It was also important for the Committee to approve minutes soon after the meeting taking place during the course of the year to avoid backlogs in their work.

Mr De Freitas agreed with Mr Suka that the minutes should be approved during the course of the year but the difficulty in doing so was there had to be a quorum at their meetings. It was crucial Members commit themselves to having a quorum at meetings in order to immediately approve minutes.

The Chairperson noted that the two contributions from both Mr Suka and Mr De Freitas were not contradictory but complemented each other, and there was already a commitment from Members of the Portfolio Committee to attend meetings in order to approve minutes of the previous meeting. The Committee staff should ensure that all Members receive copies of the minutes beforehand to reduce the time it takes to read minutes in the meeting and to assist Members to identify problems beforehand. She emphasised that from then on the first item on the agenda of the meeting should be the approval of the previous meeting minutes before any other issue could be discussed.

Mr Lucas noted that he had read the report on oversight to KZN, North West and Eastern Cape, and what came out in every chapter of it was road maintenance which should be followed up. He was not sure they had achieved what they wanted to achieve because he had seen over the holiday period huge potholes in the roads. He suggested the Committee should coordinate a workshop and invite Provincial Portfolio Committees to understand their work, and decide on a single model for road maintenance.

Ms Dlakude concurred with Mr Lucas on the issue of follow up. She suggested that when they do oversight visits they should target one Province at a time because they ended up not doing justice to the work that they were doing, they end up travelling a lot instead of doing the work they were supposed to do. For example, in North West they ended up doing one road only because they had to rush to KZN. If they were committed to service delivery, they needed to do one Province at a time.

Mr De Freitas noted that since they were embarking on an oversight visit to the Eastern Cape the following week, it might be helpful for Members to have a “draft report” in advance because they would end up rushing from one place to another if they did not identify the problems they needed to assess. He also supported the notion that they should visit one Province at a time although the budget implications should be thrown into the pot.

Mr Suka noted the report had sound recommendations. He referred to their undertaking to assist some of the local municipalities such as the recommendation that the Committee explore ways in assisting Mhlathuze Local Municipality to acquire mining licences. He asked if as a Committee, they had done that.

The Chairperson explained that at Mhlathuze a mining company want to work together with the Provincial Department of Transport and Mhlathuze Local Municipality to upgrade the road which was badly damaged. This meant a sum of R42 million from the Department to meet the contribution made by the mining company. There was nothing that referred to mining rights but rather a contribution to upgrade the road. The mining company wanted the Department to commit to the upgrading of the road which could be defined as an access road in the sense that it cut across five schools, two public clinics and a tribal authority, and it was in a densely populated area. It was important to correct the perception that the road upgrade was for mining purposes because it was about service delivery. As a Committee they should commit themselves to facilitating the discussions between the mining company and Provincial Department to understand why the Provincial Department was not responding positively to the offer of the mining company to put in money for the road upgrade. They should ask the Provincial Department why the road was not prioritised when it provided access to five schools, two clinics and tribal authority.

Ms Ngele agreed about the need to follow up on matters in the areas the Committee had visited. In the Eastern Cape at uMthata there were potholes right in the city centre. Few of those potholes had been fixed. Many were still visible.

The Chairperson interjected that what Ms Dlakude and Mr De Freitas were saying was the way their oversight was planned, they spent more time travelling and less time doing their work.

Ms Ngele said she agreed with that. She referred the Committee to page 15 of the draft committee report which stated that the Sabatha Dalindyebo Municipality had been given R60 million. The repair and rebuilding of the road from uMthata to Idutywa was the only thing she could identify the municipality was doing.

The Chairperson requested Members to focus on page one of the report. They should look at what they had discovered and whether it related to what they had wanted to achieve through the visits. One of the reasons for the Committee’s oversight visits was to establish whether the Provincial Departments implementation strategies focussed on poverty reduction, job creation and cooperative economic development. So they were not just looking at road infrastructure per se but also its relationship with improved socio-economic conditions, local economic development and the principles of sustainable development in a developmental state. If they were not able to marry infrastructure development with socio-economic development, they would be missing the point. Otherwise they would remain with the same policy in transport which stated that a gravel road in the rural area could only be upgraded from gravel to black top if there were 200 cars using that road daily. If one defined transport as the heartbeat for social and economic development, surely there was something wrong with such a policy? Policy should be related to the definition of transport and the Committee should influence the change of that policy. They needed a policy that talked to transport as the heartbeat and facilitator of economic development as opposed to road transport infrastructure informed by the number of cars on that road.

She noted the Committee’s study tour to China whose model did not speak to the number of cars on the road but spoke to the unevenness of development and how they used transport infrastructure to attract investment into underdeveloped areas. Thus it was not just road infrastructure but road infrastructure in relation to the socio-economic conditions of the areas they sought to develop.

Mr Suka referred to the three objectives of the oversight visit and said surely it meant that the Committee had to follow up on these because these issues did not come out clearly from the visit to the Provinces. The Committee was kept in provincial boardrooms instead of going out to see what they wanted to see. Since it was now towards the end of the financial year, strides should have been made and the province should be asked to explain what they had received, how much they had spent, how many jobs they had created, and what was the rate of unemployment. And that would give them the appetite to go to a single Province to do an in-depth job that would have an impact on the local economic development of that particular area. The Committee should return and get a full briefing from each Province, then on the second day they should visit projects, and on the third day come home and assess what they had seen on the ground so as to iron out what the corrective measures were. The Committee also needed to interact with communities directly when they embarked on oversight visits, to hear from the people themselves who were affected by those socio-economic conditions.

Ms Dlakude proposed that as policy makers they should do away with allocating budgets according to population but rather allocate them according to backlog and resources otherwise poor Provinces would remain poor. That would assist in job creation and minimise the movement of people from rural to urban areas. It would minimise the informal settlements around cities and cities would be clean. As a Committee they should influence that the budget be allocated in terms of the backlog and this would go a long way in reducing poverty in South Africa.

Mr Suka agreed that they should not be driven by statistics but rather by the needs of the people because currently the budget was allocated according to a formula which did not respond to the needs of the people.

The Chairperson proposed that they should re-look at the observations and recommendations of the report related to the Committee’s main objectives about the implementation strategy of road infrastructure and it having to relate to socio-economic conditions and job creation. It was crucial that the Committee facilitate a workshop with Provincial Departments to discuss the issues raised in the report and to get feedback. Another observation was the appointment of consultants for planning and design because in China planning and designing was done by Government employees and there was no need to appoint private consultants.

Committee Programme
The Chairperson informed the Committee that the adoption of the Committee Programme should be deferred to a later date. This was because he had received a memo from the House Chairperson indicating the Committee had to include other issues to it, which were required in the First Term Programme. The Committee needed to identify areas of focus for the current year and include these in the programme.

Committee Minutes 
The Committee adopted the minutes of 12 April, 24 May, 8 and 21 June, 16 and 30 August,  13 September, 11, 12, 13, 18, 20 October, 1 and 22 November without amendments.

Other Matters
The Chairperson informed the Committee that the Minister of Transport had phoned her asking to brief the Committee on a number of issues such as E-Tolling, the Road Transport Management Corporation (RTMC) and fatal road accident statistics.  The Minister had wished to meet the Committee before releasing the stats and responding to the issue of E-Tolling. Unfortunately Parliament opened only after the statements were made. Nevertheless he had requested he brief the Committee before the strategic plan briefing by the Department of Transport.

The Committee agreed to meet with the Minister on 7 February 2011.

The meeting was adjourned.

[Apologies were noted from Ms N Mdaka (ANC), Mr S Farrow (DA), and Mr P Mbhele (COPE).]


Documents

No related documents

Present

  • We don't have attendance info for this committee meeting

Download as PDF

You can download this page as a PDF using your browser's print functionality. Click on the "Print" button below and select the "PDF" option under destinations/printers.

See detailed instructions for your browser here.

Share this page: