Coal Haulage Conference, Gert Sibande District Municipality, Secunda
26 October 2007
Programme Director
The Honourable Minister of Transport, Jeff Radebe
The District Mayor of Gert Sibande, Councillor Andries Gamede, and the Acting
Mayor of Govan Mbeki Municipality, Councillor Okie Motsweni
The MEC for Roads and Transport, MEC Mabuza and Members of the Executive
Council
Executive Mayors from the Gert Sibande municipalities and Councillors
Representatives and senior managers from Eskom
Representatives from the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA)
Chief Executive of South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral), Ali
and other Sanral senior managers
Representatives of the Chamber of Mines
The Director-General and Senior Managers from the Department of Transport both
at national and in the province
Representatives of other parastatals
Our contractors and consultants and other service providers
Community structures and leaders here present
Residents of the Gert Sibande District municipalities in general
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
At the outset may I express my sincere appreciation for the privilege
accorded to me by the organisers, to make opening remarks at this long-awaited
intervention aimed at rehabilitating and restoring this region's most important
infrastructure, the coal supply arteries for power generation.
The province appreciates your interest and participation in this conference
which is aimed at collectively finding solutions to address the deteriorating
condition of the coal-haulage-routes-network in the province. We are thrilled
that the deliberations of this conference will provide an opportunity for all
the stakeholders to reach consensus on a set of key interventions required for
the reconstruction and sustainable maintenance of coal haulage roads.
Over the last three years we have had fruitful and constructive engagements
with the national government and Eskom to look at various ways in which we
could design solutions that address the challenges of adverse road damages as a
result of hauling coal to Eskom power stations for electricity generation.
Programme Director, allow me to thank the Honourable. Minister of Transport
and the Minister of Public Enterprises respectively for their political
leadership and support towards dealing with the challenges of the coal haulage
routes network.
Our view is that an efficient and effective transport system enables
economic and social development, and the deterioration of the road network
therefore has negative consequences on the economy. In Mpumalanga, roads play a
major role in the economy because a significant portion of the province's coal
(and other minerals) transportation system is land based.
The growth of the South African economy has been coupled with growing demand
for energy inputs to support the economy. Energy demand and supply to
households has also been growing exponentially. All this has created a need for
the expansion of Eskom's production capacity to cater for the growing national
energy needs. Increased growth in coal demand by Eskom and the re-commissioning
of previously mothballed power stations has seen the increase in the volume of
coal transported by road to the power stations.
The rapid increase in coal hauling by road for power generation has resulted
in a significant deterioration in the road conditions and this has had a
negative impact on road safety in the province. The degradation of coal haulage
routes has forced users to use alternative longer routes to reach destinations
thereby placing an unnecessary premium on the cost of coal. A consequent effect
is that the alternative routes are suffering the same degradation as the
preferred routes.
As a matter of heritage, South Africa's inexhaustible coal deposits are
here, it is not a provincial matter, and it is a national design.
Given the province's limited resources, our pace of constructing,
rehabilitating and maintaining the road network has not matched the pace of
demand on our roads. There is therefore a need for collaboration and
partnerships among stakeholders to address challenges on the coal haulage
network.
The purpose of this conference is to ensure that we engage all the relevant
key stakeholders such as Eskom, mining houses and companies that are active in
this sector on the role they can play in ensuring the provision and maintenance
of the roads infrastructure. The principle that 'the user must pay' for the use
of the road network should be upheld so, that resources for the maintenance of
the coal haulage network are continuously mobilised. In this context, the
opening of the Kinross Weighbridge this morning is an important development in
the management of our roads.
There needs to be a collective agreement on the strategic road network grid
to support present and future mining in Mpumalanga as well as a sustainable
funding model that will enlist equitable contributions by all the role players.
It will hopefully present solutions for public-private partnership models
necessary to improve road infrastructure and enforce overload control and
monitoring so that we limit damage on our roads.
We are furthermore hopeful that this conference will be crucial in mapping
out concrete plans for increased investment in rail infrastructure to minimise
the impact of coal freight on our roads.
Programme Director, it is our honest and humble view that when it comes to
confronting tactical realities which are presented by objective varied sets of
circumstances, nothing can and should be cast in stone. In time, we believe we
will find one another with Spoornet about the future rail plans for this
region.
I would like to convey our appreciation of Eskom's commitment and
contribution towards funding the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the coal
haulage network. You displayed boldness characteristic of high impact
leadership by thinking outside the comfort of the familiar boxes we are
accustomed to operating in. You defied the temptation to hide behind adducing
the legitimate excuse of the irrelevance of this challenge to your
core-business, energy generation, as a government business concern.
Your example has inspired your other partners in this project, viz, the
provincial government and Sanral to honour their obligation to mobilise more
resources to meet the shortfall in the projected overall budgets. On behalf of
the provincial government may I take this opportunity to pledge our commitment
to honour our obligation in this regard.
In conclusion, Programme Director, whereas this project is about
guaranteeing the requisite energy supplies to our growing economy, it is to our
province one of the economic high impact projects for job creation in order to
half poverty and unemployment through the envisaged investment of R3 billion
plus in the next three years.
Thank you
Issued by: Mpumalanga Provincial Government
26 October 2007
