Economic Regulation of Transport Bill: deliberations; Moloto Rail Corridor; with Minister and Deputy Minister

Meeting report

Deliberations on the Economic Regulation of Transport (ERT) Bill

Mr Moeketsi Sikhudo, Director, Department of Transport (DoT) summarised the reasons for the exclusion of the Cross Border Road Transport Agency (CBRTA), the National Public Transport Regulator (NPTR) and other regulators from the ERT Bill, as well as clause-by-clause clarifications that were requested by Members of the Committee.

Mr C Hunsinger (DA) was disappointed because there were four elements which he always considered when looking at a suggested Bill or amendment. These were content, structure, purpose and benefits.  He was not happy with the way in which the Department had presented this particular Bill. He had been with the Portfolio Committee on Transport for seven years going on eight, and in those years, there had always been mention of a STER (Single Transport Economic Regulator). This had also been mentioned in several budget allocations over the years. He said there was expectation and excitement when STER was finally brought to the table, but then for some reason the “S” disappeared and the presentation was on Economic Regulation of Transport.  Asking that a different structure be accepted now was like asking the Committee to make an omelette without eggs. The form that had been presented was that the ports regulator would be the flagship and the experimental entity after which a phased approach would be used, and that had been unanimously accepted. Now it seemed that particular segments would be targeted. This was something different and the content, structure, purpose and benefits had changed.

Mr Hunsinger said that he was now hesitant and full of doubt when he had been positive and motivated before. It seemed that the Department itself was confused. He proposed that the Bill in its current form be taken off the table and be rewritten. The Department had not played fair with the Committee in the drafting of the Bill.

Mr T Mabhena (DA) agreed with Mr Hunsinger that the Bill should be rewritten.

Mr K Sithole (IFP) also agreed.

Mr L McDonald (ANC) said that the Committee was in a predicament. He was very worried because when the Department came to the Committee and said they were bringing in the Bill, it seemed that there would be major savings and considerable advantages for the government and the people of South Africa across different spheres of government. However, it seemed that it was going to cost an additional R50 million a year instead of saving R200 million or R190 million, because it was going to take more than ten years to have all the entities brought inside the Bill and the new entity that it proposed. He said that the Department was slightly disrespectful because the Portfolio Committee had made a decision that they would like to see consequential amendments.

Mr L Mangcu (ANC) requested that the discussion be deferred to another Committee meeting as he had not had the benefit of hearing the presentation by the Department on the Bill. He apologised that he could not log into the virtual meeting in time to hear the gist of the presentation. He could judge from the responses of the Committee that the Committee was not pleased. He added that he did not mean to undermine the views of Committee members. He noted that he had been part of the Bill for a very long time and was surprised to hear that something drastic might have happened.

Ms Dikeledi Magadzi, Deputy Minister of Transport, requested that while Parliament was in recess, the Department be given an opportunity to look into the issues that had been raised by the Committee. She added that she did not believe that the country could have a Bill that only covered the interests of the Department as it should also serve the people of the Republic of South Africa. The aim of having an Economic Regulator on Transport was to reduce the cost of regulating all the entities or business units in the DoT.

Mr McDonald supported Mr Mangcu’s proposal and the Deputy Minister’s plea to the Committee to give everyone time to look at the Bill and come back to have another discussion.

The Chairperson asked if the Committee was in a position to allow the Department some time to look at the Committee’s comments on the Bill and return to discuss them at a later stage.

Adv. Alma Nel, Committee Content Advisor, said that the Department needed to be allowed to go through another document that they had sent to the Committee, as it appeared to have more of a clause-by-clause approach in addressing the concerns that members had raised. It was important to note that the committee wanted to see how the CBRTA would fit into the space of the regulator. It was a valid request because there was great reliance on the financial viability of the Bill and the arguments that the Department presented on the cost savings. Members had noted that the CBRTA had the biggest budget line and wanted to know if the Bill would still be a cost saver in its current form if the CBRTA was excluded from its provisions. That might be where common ground needed to be found. Allowing the Department some time during recess to assess their responses to the Committee might assist.

Mr Hunsinger said that the Committee was missing a very important point, that they approached this Bill on the basis of particular content, structure, purpose and benefits presented by the Department. The Department had also given the Committee details on cost savings that were based on a particular phased approach and now all of this had changed. He refused to accept that the Committee would simply pardon this and try to patch up the Bill when it was damaged from the onset. He said that he stood by his position.  He wanted to know when the Department discovered that some things needed to be changed and why that was not researched before. He wanted to know what had been happening in terms of the work that was being done on the STER and why money was spent by the Department in the development of it. He suggested that the Bill had been polluted in a manner that could not be fixed and said that it must be restarted from the beginning.

The Chairperson said that the Committee had dealt with the Bill up to a point where they were considering the schedules and the Department was supposed to respond to concerns raised with regard to the schedules. The Department was saying they were willing to listen to the concerns that were raised at that level. Mr Hunsinger was saying that the Department’s presentation seemed to alter what had been discussed in the previous engagement. The Chairperson said he gave the benefit of doubt to the Deputy Minister.

Deputy Minister Magadzi asked for an opportunity to go look into the issues and concerns of the Committee and then come back to the Committee.

The Chairperson said that it was not the intention of the Committee to not support anything tangible. He said that the Committee would table its concerns again in the next engagement after the parliamentary recess before a concrete decision was taken on the matter.

Mr Mabhena said that the precedent set by the Chairperson that he would afford other Committee Members an opportunity to engage on the Bill was a good one, and added that when the time came, he must also be willing to indulge those members who wished to share their concerns.

The Chairperson said that he afforded the opportunity for further engagement in response to the requests of the Deputy Minister and Mr Mangcu and this would give everybody a chance.

Meeting on the Moloto Rail Corridor

Presentation by Department of Transport

Mr Fikile Mbalula, Minister of Transport, said that the item had been discussed at the last engagement between the Department and the Portfolio Committee on Transport. The presentation had detailed rail corridor options. The Department had explained the details of the challenges they were facing regarding the Moloto Rail Corridor and the position of National Treasury who would speak for itself on the financial viability of the Moloto Corridor Project. Minister Mbalula said that the Moloto Rail Project had a long history which dated back all the way from 2004 to the current administration. The Department had acknowledged the importance of the project in the Budget Vote speech of 9 July 2019. Over this extended period of time, two feasibility studies had been concluded and various funding motivations had been submitted to National Treasury and Cabinet. National Treasury had also appointed its own external team to conduct an independent assessment. 

The first feasibility study was conducted by the Mpumalanga Department of Transport and Public Works and its main objective was to prove the viability of passenger rail as the backbone of an Integrated Multi-Modal Transport System. The rail project would serve as a catalyst for economic development initiatives within and around the corridor. The feasibility study covered the first phase of the Moloto Rail Corridor in the section between the City of Tshwane and Siyabuswa, and it was found to be feasible. The cost of the implementation of the project then was estimated to be R8.6 billion. The Department motivated funding for this project during the 2008/2009, 2009/10, 2010/11 and 2012/13 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) budgets. However it was unsuccessful in securing funding from National Treasury.

The second feasibility study was undertaken by the DoT with the aim of broadening the transport study. A Steering Committee was established and convened by the Director-General of the Department in November 2011. A decision was taken that the feasibility study should be conducted strictly in accordance with Treasury Regulation 16 and the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Guidelines. The Moloto Rail Corridor Project was registered as a PPP project with National Treasury, and the project was included as part of the Strategic Infrastructure Projects. Subsequent to the second feasibility study, the Department and the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (PRASA) presented the motivation for this project to National Treasury in June 2015. National Treasury expressed concern that the second feasibility study only considered possible transport options. Although other options would fall outside the mandate of the Department, non-transport options needed to be considered. Against that background, National Treasury appointed an external team to conduct an independent assessment and review of the feasibility study. The review report presented five different options:

A do-nothing minimum approach option by terminating the existing bus subsidy;
Terminate or phase out the bus subsidy and reallocate the subsidy;
Terminate or phase out the existing bus subsidy and relocate the resulting subsidy saving to existing commuters or eligible qualifiers;
Construct rapid rail up to Moloto KwaMhlanga rail in the Moloto region to reduce travel demand;
Construct rapid rail up to Siyabuswa.

The DoT submitted an application to National Treasury titled budget facility for infrastructure application and outcome on 31 August 2017. The funds were to enable the Department to take forward the planning of the project from the financial year 2018/19. The National Treasury conducted a technical assessment process through the Joint Technical Committee (JTC), a multi-stakeholder committee composed of senior members of the National Treasury National Planning Commission, the Presidential Infrastructure Coordination Commission and the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. On 24 November 2017, a special Medium Term Expenditure Committee (MTEC) meeting was held to consider the presentation put forward by the JTC. After this consideration, the MTEC compiled a report which was considered by the Ministers’ Committee on the Budget (MinComBud) at a meeting held on 29 January 2018. The Department received the outcome of the application on 5 April 2018, which indicated that the request for funding was not supported. The implication of this outcome was that there were currently no funds for the Moloto Rail Corridor Development Project.

Mr Alec Moemi, Director-General, DoT, provided a detailed presentation of what had been summarised by the Minister.

Presentation by National Treasury

Ms Ulrike Britton, Chief Director: Urban Development and Infrastructure, National Treasury, presented on the background of the Moloto Rail Corridor as well as the main issues identified during the feasibility studies. Among these were a lack of economic development in the area, limited access to work opportunities in the immediate vicinity, excess commuting distances from home to work, long travel times on the commute, high costs to government and commuters, poor levels of service on substandard local roads, increasing traffic congestion in urban areas as well as unsafe operations on the R573 road.  

In concluding the presentation, she noted that some of the reasons why the funding was not approved were that the Corridor was not affordable, it did not transfer significant risk and did not provide value for money. She also noted that the feasibility study made a case for development interventions in the area and that in focusing on transport solutions, it neglected broader settlement and development challenges of the region. She added that without investments to change the spatial economy, the project was unlikely to yield the social, economic and development dividends that would warrant an investment of this scale and magnitude.

Discussion

Mr Hunsinger wanted to know if any budget consideration and project application was considered outside of the framework of regulation 16, given the fact that regulation 16 channelled one into a particular framework and a particular type of submission. This was because regulation 16 had predetermined criteria and the outcome was judged against those criteria. He asked this in the light of housing projects, school projects, hospital projects, etc. because he wanted to understand how opportunity cost was considered within a framework. He wanted to know if there was any attempt to restructure the deal since there were very few countries and consortiums that would be interested in a project of this nature. He recalled that in October 2014, an announcement was made by the Department that it had signed over the project to PRASA. He wanted to understand what exactly was signed over and the intention for that. He wanted to know why the Minister mentioned the Moloto Railway in his July 2019 budget when it was now clear that the Treasury had said no to this project in 2015 and 2018. 

He said that it seemed like there was an anti-rural approach when it came to this type of project. Such projects in rural areas were opposed because of low economic activity and substandard roads. He said that he was criticizing the methodology of the project simply because it was one-sided and not a pro-rural approach. It would mean that only cities would have infrastructure and the benefit of speedy transfer and mobility, which was just not fair to rural areas. He wanted to know how Treasury justified Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and whether they used the same criteria. He wanted to know where in the world a rail project was affordable from the onset. It might get profitable over many years and in high density areas and even then there were elements of subsidy, particularly in the infrastructure and establishment phase. He was shocked to hear that these very strict criteria were used to judge a project like the Moloto Rail Corridor which was really important and would bring change to many people’s lives.

Mr Mabhena said that the Committee was being disrespected by both the Department and National Treasury and added that they were showing the middle finger to the people of Mpumalanga. This was on the basis that people from kwaNdebele did not deserve to have a big project that would save lives. There was no development in Mpumalanga, and that forced people to look for jobs in Pretoria. This was the fault of the failing ANC government, a government of criminals and a government that was basically saying the people of kwaNdebele should die. He wanted to know how many people must continue to die in Moloto because of the failure of the ANC government. He said that the ANC government always went to Moloto to lie to the people, and they always brought the media. The President went to Kwaggafontein to tell the people that the Moloto Railway Corridor had been approved and that there a Memorandum of Understanding had been signed. Now the Committee was told that National Treasury was not aware of this. This was nonsensical governance.

He said that when the Committee went to report back to Mpumalanga, it was not PRASA who must go with them. The Minister of Transport, as well as National Treasury needed to go and explain this to the people at kwaMhlanga. In the last oversight meeting that the Committee had in Mpumalanga, PRASA could not even speak because they were scared for their lives. The Chairperson had to intervene and say they were not there to make a presentation because had they made the presentation, they would have probably not made it out of that legislature alive. Mr Mabhena asked how many people had to die before the Department and National Treasury took Mpumalanga seriously. National Treasury continued to bail out SAA, which was a failed project. He said that his mother had been a domestic worker who had to wake up at 2 am to catch a 3 am bus to go to work in Pretoria because she had to arrive there early in the morning. Hundreds and thousands of people were still subjected to those conditions in Mpumalanga and some of them came back in body bags. All of this was because of the lying ANC government that was stealing and killing the people.

He said that Eskom was able to suspend load shedding in order to accommodate the burial of King Goodwill Zwelithini, but if an Ndebele King were to pass away, load shedding would continue. This said that the ANC government hated and disregarded the people of kwaNdebele. He asked how many protests must happen before the ANC woke up and smelled the coffee. People were not going on the streets because they liked to do so, they needed service delivery. He asked how many people have died since the start of the Moloto road project.

Mr McDonald said that he had also read the Minister’s June 2019 budget speech and it clearly stated that the Moloto Rail Corridor Project was part of their strategic plan. He said that the Department and the Portfolio Committee promised the people of Moloto an alternative to death for many years and then money was spent on feasibility studies that bore no fruit. He said that it was hogwash to base any decision on feasibility studies that were done in 2014 and 2011. There could not be just 40 000 people working in kwaMhlanga, it was impossible. There were hundreds of thousands of people working there and somebody needed to take account of it. He asked Treasury to provide an account of how much they thought a life was worth. He said that he was not going back to Moloto to tell the people that the Department and government were not going to give them a railroad when people were literally dying every day.

Mr Mangcu said that Mr Mabhena’s anger was understandable, but maybe some of the language used should be discouraged. He added that he did not think that anyone from the different political parties was  happy with what was happening to the people at Moloto, which was why there was a meeting, and why the Committee went and stood there despite being threatened. He said that the disappointing presentations should not bring division to the Committee, as different political parties had always pulled together. He said that he had had the impression that the Treasury had done their own feasibility study that showed them that the project was not feasible, but now that it had been clarified that they never did a feasibility study, he wanted to hear comments on whether the cost of accidents was factored in. 

Mr Mangcu was interested in the figures that said that the project was not feasible at all. People who could access a BRT system had alternatives. They could take another city bus or Metrorail when it was still running or whatever means, whereas the people of Mpumalanga had no alternative but to be on that road to go and seek employment in the cities. It would appear that the Treasury had a pro-poverty way of looking at things, which is very sad to be talking about many years after democracy.

Mr Sithole said that he was disgusted by the presentation from National Treasury, as it seemed that they did not care about the people. He reminded Treasury that the Committee consisted of Members of Parliament who had been sent there by the voters because they wanted service delivery. The people did not care what Treasury said. All they cared about was that they received services. The Moloto Road in Mpumalanga was now called the killer road because of the number of people killed on that road. He wanted to know the number of feasibility studies that were conducted by National Treasury as they opposed the studies conducted by the DoT. If they did not conduct any feasibility study, he wanted to know why that was the case. It was actually disgusting when the Treasury did not care about the lives of the people. Treasury could not continue talking about transformation when they were anti-rural in their planning. Mr Sithole asked the Chairperson about the possibility of having a meeting with the Portfolio Committee on Finance, alongside National Treasury and the DoT, in order to find a solution on the Moloto situation.

The Chairperson said that he understood the frustrations of the Committee. Nevertheless they needed to show leadership. He appreciated that the DoT had given their best shot to see to it that the people of kwaMhlanga had better infrastructure. He wanted to know the position of Treasury in terms of the high-speed train announced by the President in his budget speech. He wanted to know if this was a project that was going to be fulfilled, and if it was, he wanted to know if the route was going to go via Musina, Mpumalanga and kwaMhlanga. He wanted to know when the Committee could expect SANRAL to start with the road project and if they had already started, what phase they were in.

Response by the National Treasury

Dr Mampho Modise, Deputy Director-General: Public Finance, National Treasury, said that she was from Vlaklaagte 1 in Mpumalanga and when she was travelling to school, she would take a Putco Bus to the taxis. She said that she understood the struggles faced by the people of kwaNdebele, as she had lived through it and was still living through it because her mother still travelled by bus. The problem with working for National Treasury was that you could not only cater for issues of your hometown, but you had to look at all the issues put before you equally. When Treasury had to look into the Moloto project, they also had to look at the projects at other towns as well. The reason for that was to ensure that everyone who came from places like those of kwaNdebele received equal assistance from government. Treasury wanted to ensure that it could afford the rail Corridor and its maintenance in the future. The Committee should not see it as if National Treasury did not care about the people of kwaNdebele.

Dr Modise said that she came from kwaNdebele and was aware that people were dying at Moloto. Treasury was not saying that it did not want to fund the Moloto project, but it was looking for ways to make sure that the project could be sustainable and affordable. For now, the plan was to fix the roads that were there so that the other modes of transportation that existed could continue to operate, and then the next phase would begin.

Ms Hunsinger asked for a basic summary of what Ms Modise was saying, as she was speaking in isiNdebele.

The Chairperson summarised for Mr Hunsinger.

Ms Britton said that a Treasury approval through a Treasury regulation 16 process took one down a very specific path that did not necessarily apply to other infrastructure projects. The importance of the first part of the economic evaluation was what applied here, so there are two methodologies used by the Treasury to justify investments. The first was the cost benefit analysis and that was not necessarily just about the costs, but about benefits being greater than the cost. It looked at the full cost for the life cycle that would include both the direct costs, which sometimes might be referred to as the financial costs, and also the empathetic cost that was often associated with the choices that were made. It also considered the indirect benefits that came with that. In some cases a cost benefit analysis would not necessarily apply to larger social infrastructure projects. In that case, Treasury did a cost effectiveness analysis.

In relation to Treasury having an anti-rural approach, she said that one of the profound things in the policy specifically around the Integrated Urban Development Framework was that it recognised the importance of the rural-urban linkages. Those rural-urban linkages went beyond just a transport linkage, but also to the food and raw materials. It was not necessarily that it was anti-rural, but what Treasury was asking for was that the investments made were fit for purpose. The current proposal was to take people to jobs but an alternative might be to bring jobs to people. They were looking at which of these conclusions could give the best outcomes. Maybe it was both options, and those options needed to be explored.

Ms Britton said that the 2008 study by the Mpumalanga Government indicated a cost of R8.9 billion. The total cost of the project in the 2014 feasibility study by the DoT was R57 billion. Cost is one thing, but when doing an economic evaluation, the benefits should outweigh the costs. National Treasury was trying break the apartheid spatial legacy through the investments that they made. Part of putting down permanent rail infrastructure was entrenching that legacy. Treasury did not do a feasibility study of its own because it did not want to infringe on the mandates of the other departments. The functions of Treasury in the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) were that it dictated the norms and standards around effective and efficient financial management and the management of assets and liabilities and revenue. Treasury’s responsibilities were to review the proposals that the Department of Transport made around all of this. When the Minister of Finance initially introduced the PFMA in Parliament, he said that the PFMA was based on allowing programme managers to manage and holding them to account for the management decisions. If Treasury had to do the feasibility studies themselves, they would be managing programmes on behalf of programme managers. Feasibility studies were not the core work of Treasury and they did not want to undermine transport planning capabilities and capacity.

In response to the question about the high-speed train, Ms Britton said that the beauty of doing an economic cost benefit analysis is that it would give a sense of what the next best place was to spend money. In the absence of significant work that the DoT was still undertaking, it would be premature for the Treasury to give a view. The numbers would  show whether the benefits outweighed the costs, whether this was even a fiscal investment or whether the project could be carried by the private sector. There were significant uncertainties about assumptions around freight rail.

Regarding the SANRAL project, once the political oversight committee had made the decision in 2014 around proceeding with the road and Treasury had got confirmation that the provinces had transferred the road to SANRAL; funds were then allocated to SANRAL. The budget was quite significant and had been there since probably 2016 and even earlier than that.

The Chairperson asked if it would be appropriate for government to go to the people of Moloto to say that the Rail Corridor was not going to happen. 

Dr Modise said that Treasury always put forward proposals made by departments. The last time this proposal was put forward was to the Ministers’ Committee on the Budget, and that was where it was said that there was still more work to be done. Treasury did not stop projects and proposals that were approved by Ministers went to the Cabinet for approval. The Minister of Transport was a Cabinet Member, so if the Minister and department had done a proper feasibility study and followed a proper technical assessment of the project, Treasury would always put it forward, and Cabinet would make the decision on whether the matter needed to be put before Parliament. The Cabinet decided whether or not a project got funded. If Treasury felt that a proposal by the Department was lacking certain elements, they assisted the Department to improve the proposal.

Response by the Department of Transport

Minister Mbalula said that the reality of the matter was that government did pronounce on Moloto in the State of the Nation Address and a commitment was made that this rail would be delivered. The concept had been raised first in 2004 by the Premier of Mpumalanga. Subsequent to that, it was supposed to be budgeted for and implemented. Conceptually, it would not be viable that government did not fund corridors simply because they were not economically viable. Government structures in terms of decision making from a financial point of view had considered this matter twice and said that there was no funding. Minister Mbalula said that he could not come to the Portfolio Committee and lie because tomorrow they would say that he had lied before Parliament. He said that in July 2019, he only spoke about the Moloto road expansion. He had negotiated with the Gauteng Government to come to the party in terms of the road option, which was currently being implemented.

The Minister said that he was not a thief, and neither was government. The fact that there was a Zondo Commission was not a result of turning a blind eye to corruption. The broken record that the ANC government tolerated corruption was not true, because if it did, there would be no Commission, and everything would be under the carpet.

He said that he was not a person for the limelight and that he went with the media to Moloto to launch a project for the expansion of the roads. He said that he did not go there to get the limelight over the bodies of dead people and added that he was working on a solution with the PUTCO bus company so that in the meantime, the bus system there was upgraded. He said that he confronted the people in that area and told the police to leave. He had told the people that there was no money to build a rail corridor.  He agreed that the ANC government did not handle the Moloto Rail issue in a proper manner. He said that those people had the right to protest but he had gone and spoken to them. The King of amaNdebele wanted to meet the President of the country because the people felt they were not taken seriously by the government.  Government's policy was moving people and goods from roads to rail, and that was what they were supposed to be doing. The DoT and National Treasury still had to look at this going into the future and in the context of its economic recovery plan.

The Minister said he was currently busy with the feasibility study on speed rail. He added that he could not conclusively say that the Moloto Rail Corridor was not doable going into the future, but could not commit that it was in the Department’s plans currently. What was in the plans, and was currently being implemented, was the road expansion.

Mr Mabhena said that the question by Mr Mangcu about whether the cost of lives lost was taken into account had not been answered in any of the responses. He said that the Minister had made a commitment to the Portfolio Committee that he and National Treasury would tag along with the Committee to go and provide feedback to the people of Moloto. The presentations that had been done before the Committee needed to be done in front of the people of Mpumalanga. The Department had been invited for the previous visit to Mpumalanga, and they sent junior staff.

Minister Mbalula said he went to Mpumalanga on his own and spoke to the King and the community.

Mr Hunsinger said that he had been with the Committee since 2014 and had never witnessed this much involvement by any of the previous Ministers and thanked the Minister for that. He said that in paragraph 39 of the Minister’s budget speech in June 2019, he referred to the Moloto Rail and not the Moloto road as he claimed. He proposed that the Committee get the opportunity if it is possible to have a look at the reports of Treasury on the two feasibility studies.

The Chairperson requested that the matter be dealt with as objectively as possible and added that the Minister was indeed being objective. The aim of the meeting was not to blame anyone, but to assist each other. He appreciated the window of opportunity from the Department of Transport for reworking the proposal of the rail project while the road project was currently being implemented. It was a positive move in the direction wanted by the people of Moloto, and as a result, the Portfolio Committee would assist. He agreed with Mr Hunsinger and requested the reports from Treasury.

The Chairperson thanked the Department of Transport and the Minister and Deputy Minister for availing themselves for the meeting, as well as National Treasury, and allowed them to exit the virtual meeting. 

The Committee considered a draft programme for meetings in May and June.

The Chairperson said that the Committee should find time and a way to brief the people of Mpumalanga on how far they had moved in terms of the Rail Corridor, either by going there or through a virtual meeting. This was because the Committee had made a commitment to the community that they would brief them by the end of March. He said that when the Committee met on 14 May to deliberate on the ERT Bill, they needed to make a decision on whether it should be redrafted or not. .

Mr Mabhena objected to giving feedback to the people of Mpumalanga through a virtual platform, as that would be cowardice. He said that even if they could not go during the second parliamentary term, there should be no problem with going in the third term.

The Chairperson said that the Committee should at least write a letter to Mpumalanga to say they would provide feedback to them in the third term due to program congestion in the second term.

The meeting was adjourned.