Programme Director: HoD Public Works: Bongani. Gxilishe
Eastern Cape Premier: Ms Noxolo Kiviet
Roads and Public Works MEC Pemmy Majodina
MEC: Transport and Safety: Ms Barry Gishma
South African National Roads Agency Limited ( SANRAL) CE Mr Nazir Alli
Distinguished guests
Members of the media
Ladies and gentlemen
Programme Director, on 27September we launched the 2010 Transport Month Campaign in KwaZulu-Natal at Bridge City, where I explained the importance of transport infrastructure. Our road, rail, air and sea transport can only contribute to our economy if sustainable infrastructure maintenance, through engineering and transport planning systems, are managed properly.
Today’s Roads Indaba, here in the Eastern Cape, is a continuation of our Transport Month activities, whereby we must identify loopholes, challenges and showcase progress in transport infrastructure and services and implement appropriate remedies. Our national and provincial roads, aviation and rail networks are playing a pivotal role in the movement of people, goods and services for various reasons that all culminate to social and economic development.
This week the South African Roads Federation hosted a Roads Summit in Cape Town. This was followed by the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) Transport and Infrastructure Summit which is in progress in Gauteng.
Today we are in the Eastern Cape province where, through this Roads Indaba, we should be able to discuss challenges, share ideas and come up with concrete plans to address the backlog, maintenance and other transport challenges that come up in the wake of poor road conditions. These three major transport events, preceding each other, are a clear indication that roads and transport play a key factor in the development of all countries.
Let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that these transport infrastructure gatherings should give our transport sector a clear image and direction of where we want to be so as to uplift not only South Africa’s economy but the whole Continent.
Provincial Road Networks in South Africa
Mainly as a result of a dire shortage of professional skills and inadequate institutional arrangements, portions of the South African road network, especially those under the jurisdiction of provincial and local government, continue on a down-slide. This situation is giving rise to greatly increased costs of transport risks of vehicle crashes, loss of life and damage due to the deterioration of road surfaces.
Our country stood up and took notice when the serious lack of maintenance and planning caused electricity shortages and failures, but in many areas our roads have reached the same crisis proportions.
They are unable to cope with the demand and are failing through lack of maintenance. The Eastern Cape province is not an exception, and is also affected by issues of road infrastructure maintenance challenges. South Africa has a poor road safety record by world standards with annual fatalities of approximately 265 per million populations compared with an international average of 85.
A poorly maintained road substantially increases the risk of road crashes. In 1988, only 10% of our provincial road network was classified as being in a poor and very poor condition in 2008 that figure had risen to 60%. Similarly, in 1988, 70% of the provincial road network was measured to be good and very good; in 2008 that figure had dropped to 15%.The provincial roads departments are having a challenge in maintaining their road networks.
Many significant professional bodies have added their voice to the need for improved management of our road infrastructure. The South African Institute of Civil Engineers (SAICE), through the President for 2008, state that “the lack of upgrading and maintenance is leading to collapse of existing infrastructure systems” including roads. The extent of low or non-existent staff compliments such as civil engineers or civil engineering technicians at government level is cause for concern.
I agree and in addition engineers can no longer afford to be silent, and decision-makers cannot be left to make decisions in a vacuum.
Road Asset Management
In order for us to deal with some of the road infrastructure maintenance challenges that we face, we are keeping in line with some of the road summit recommendations in May. We need a good asset management system because that is what informs where and what investments to make on our roads infrastructure. With regard to asset preservation, at the road summit we agreed that SANRAL’s road management system will be used and that SANRAL will help other road authorities with the collection of data about road conditions.
In this regard roads departments will have to prioritise asset preservation on new road works. The provincial treasuries need to earmark funds for our asset management preservation.
We need them to earmark funds for them to a minimum of 65% of the budget and preferably 80% of the budget for asset preservation for us to deal with the catch up with the backlog of our road maintenance.
Shortage of professional engineers
The National Department of Transport’s Road Infrastructure Strategic Framework (RIFSA) for South Africa, describes the provincial authorities as having bloated, unskilled and inefficient staff structures and a lack of professional, technical and managerial skills.
As we will deliberate during this Indaba, let’s remember that solutions must emerge from within us. According to the RIFSA document, professional posts are filled by persons without adequate roads experience and who are not registered Professional Engineers or Technologists.
I would like to highlight the following facts that are worth noting and subsequent action is needed. After the floods in the year 2000, six months elapsed before major repairs took place on major provincial roads. The inability to take prompt decisions in 2000 caused enormous hardships and additional damage. Strategic planning is lacking in infrastructure delivery. Where proposals are made, those in senior positions are frequently not sufficiently skilled to make decisions about the viability of projects. As a result, many key projects are simply not happening and this is impacting severely on the country’s economy.
The lack of strategic direction, decision-making and development in transport infrastructure is costing the country many billions of rand per annum. In respect of finance, figures quoted by Dr John Sampson, a past President of the South African Roads Federation, indicate that some R32 billion per annum is required for the maintenance of our national and provincial roads. By far the greatest need is on our provincial road network.
The reason why we are here is to come up with solutions and not to identify problems and leave them as they are. The issue here is the need to optimise road management and road programmes through effective delivery.
Apart from the various approaches to resolve this situation, improving capacity and increased funding institutional restructuring in the roads sector would assist in the solution to the problem. South Africa is one of the few countries in the world where strong powers in respect of road provision reside at all three levels of government.
For effective and efficient management of the road network we need:
- a competent bureaucracy
- adequate professional technical capacity
- perspective and strong leadership and political will
- clear clarification of responsibilities
- the ability to make timely and wiser decisions
- the ability to implement projects
- No ideological interference.
Do we have these characteristics in our road administration agencies in South Africa? It is important to ensure that these principles are incorporated into the management of our provincial road network. The rationalisation of road authorities along the lines suggested in the Road Infrastructure Strategic Framework for South Africa is the best way to address the problem of our crumbling provincial road infrastructure.
This approach has been very successfully carried out in the case of the national roads through the South African National Roads Agency, as well as in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and other countries.
The Road Infrastructure Framework
The Road Infrastructure Strategic Framework for South Africa (RIFSA) identified six critical areas for intervention if our roads are to serve as catalysts for required development. I will highlight these as I am sure the discussions at this indaba will cover these issues directly or indirectly.
We identified that there was and still is a need for effective institutional and coordination arrangements for road delivery given the constitutional assignment of functions for roads. There is one Minister of Transport, nine provincial MECs, and Municipal Mayors who each have responsibility for sections of the 750 000 kilometres of our country’s road network. South Africans do not care whether a road in rural areas is owned and maintained by the local authority; they want the road to provide them with access to social and economic amenities and also improve their mobility.
We have capacity and capability in the developed authorities coupled with limited or no capacity at developing authority level. The other area, which is as critical, is the development and maintenance of information and decision support systems.
There is science behind how we decide on the construction, maintenance and rehabilitation of our roads. Information about the state of the road is very important in determining what maintenance works is required and when this should be done.
To make a quick illustration, we know that:
- About 80% of our road network is now older than the 20 year design life based on information from 64% of the roads, primarily national, provincial and some cities.
- Only 4% of municipal road information was obtainable in this exercise.
The biggest challenge with roads is that by the time a problem is visible on the road surfaces, it means we are somewhat late with remedial action. On the other hand, whilst the road might be deteriorating without showing the stress on the surface we often do not see the need to do the necessary interventions.
In a context such as ours, where there are competing demands on the fiscus, this leads to inadequate allocations and delays in maintenance, which ultimately means we intervene when it is too expensive to do so. This is often prompted by the outcry about potholes as we have recently witnessed. I encourage all participants to learn from these lessons.
As a sector, however, we need to put particular attention to deal with such systems and when we have them, to update the information as regularly as required. This conference should pronounce itself on the critical actions that, as a sector, we should be committing to moving forward on this matter, taking into account that authorities are located along a continuum of state of art systems on the one hand, and paper based or no systems on the other. Careful thought should be given to how these systems can be utilized ultimately to improve our budgeting processes across the spheres.
Ladies and gentlemen, roads and road-based modes comprise the dominant form of transport in Africa, accounting for 80 to over 90 percent of inter-urban goods movement and 80 to 99 percent of passenger travel. Since the United Nations decade of growth, the development of road infrastructure followed a growth trend. The Southern region accounts for more than 40% of the total Africa road network with the Southern Africa Development Community’s (SADC) network estimated at around 930 000 Km and South Africa at about 750 000 kilometres, accounting for the bigger slice of this network.
Condition assessment
We need to make drastic improvements on our transport infrastructure networks and we have to focus and improve on the following:
- Road density and the distribution of the road network to enable improved accessibility for users.
- Reducing the practice of vehicle overloading through weigh bridges.
- The improvement in the enforcement of regulations.
- Review the low resource allocation of maintenance, which accounts for less than half of the requirements across the continent.
- Road safety conditions remain alarming due to insufficient measures that deal with the technical control of vehicles, the enforcement of traffic regulations and road signs.
- Work on interventions on the absence of appropriate prevention with regard to user behaviour.
In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, as we discuss interventions on our provincial road network challenges, I want to emphasise that we must not forget that our successes and failures as planners and experts in this field will define the purse of South Africa’s development and direction. We should always think how we want to make a difference from what we are today and what we should be in seven years time.
If we do not make an impact on our intentions then we would be depriving our country of progress and development. Through planning and implementing decisions together, I am confident that we are poised to give South Africa a comprehensive, sustainable and safe road infrastructure network.
I thank you.
