Honourable Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Transport,
Honourable members of the Committee,
Director-General of the Department of Transport,
Officials of the Department,
Acting CEO of the RTMC,
Members of the media,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is only befitting that I wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.
We are starting a new season in high spirits that the year 2012 will be the year we intensify our efforts in pursuit of efficient service delivery to our people. We begin 2012 with high hopes that we will achieve the goals we have set ourselves.
We are of the view that an opportunity exists for all of us to a make remarkable difference in our respective areas of deployment. Seasons may change but challenges remain the same. Our shared strategic mission to provide a safe, reliable transport system for our country remains relevant.
However as we all know it will take partnerships amongst ourselves for all of us to realise our goals. My department has been in the process of reorganising itself to ensure that it has the necessary capacity to discharge the required services as expected by those who bestowed the responsibility of leading it on us.
We are gearing ourselves for a year of delivery. This is the year where we will reaffirm and emphasise the role of State-Owned Companies as agents of the change we wish to see in our communities. State-Owned Companies (SOEs) are by establishment, service delivery arms of government.
I therefore wish to thank you for the opportunity to brief this honourable committee on the progress we are making in addressing critical issues in one of the country's key and strategic agencies, the Road Traffic Management Corporation. The primary and chief mandate of the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) is to make South African roads safe.
Its role is at the center of either the success or failure of programs aimed at improving the living conditions of our people. The last time this committee interacted with the leadership of the RTMC, they reported on several interventions that were being undertaken to address challenges besetting this organisation.
Other interventions are those that were aimed at improving its capacity to deliver efficient services. Among other issues discussed were the Road Safety, leadership and the RTMC's restructuring process. The leadership of the RTMC will brief this committee on the progress that they are making in addressing the issues in question.
I am personally glad that we are making headway in stabilising the RTMC, particularly at the level of leadership. Working with the interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO), we've been able to resolve the outstanding matter of the former CEO of the RTMC.
A process to appoint a CEO is well underway and we are confident that the finalisation of this process would bring the much-needed renewed hope to the organisation that as you know had been plagued by leadership challenges for some time.
We wish to commend the good work being done by the current interim CEO in ensuring that the organisation continues to function and discharge its responsibilities despite all these challenges.
Chairperson, honourable members,
Please allow me to now pay attention to a subject that's very close to my heart. We are faced with a mammoth task of changing people's conduct on our roads. We lose multiple lives every year due to road crashes. And frankly speaking this unnecessary loss of lives is preventable.
If only we could change our mindsets as South Africa, we would be able to realise minimal and less fatal crashes on our roads. Road carnage is a problem that affects us all. It is therefore also collective responsibility that will see us making inroads in making our roads safer.
South Africans in general are not lawless people. Hence out of all licensed drivers, only a few individuals continue to display total disregard for the rules of the road. These are the few who are turning our roads into killing fields. They must be isolated and exposed for their deeds are not only a danger to themselves but pose a real threat to the sustainability of society.
The RTMC estimates that between 9 and 10 million people are current holders of legal South African driving licences. A majority of these people are law-abiding citizens, some of who have never been involved in a car crash since they were issued with a driving licence.
Those are the people communities ought to be celebrating and we should be recognising. On the 16th of January we released the official statistics of deaths emanating from road crashes recorded during the December holiday break. We are glad that the figure has gone down compared with what was recorded during the preceding year.
We are however concerned that 1 475 is still a figure too high. We want to bring this number down significantly. Road deaths dropped by 75% during December 2011, as compared to the same period during 2010, on Africa's busiest corridor - the 415km N3 between Heidelberg in Gauteng and Cedara in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).
There are several measures that we are agreeing to that we believe will assist us in achieving our objective of reducing this figure. The overarching thing that we all agree on is a need to start taking a microscopic look at these bodies we count every year. We want to call on the nation, especially those people who use our roads every day, to ask themselves a number of questions about their role in Road Safety.
Coupled with intensified and uncompromising law enforcement accompanied by harsher sanctions, we want to drive social conduct change programmes that would have as their primary objective to speak to the human beings behind the drivers of these vehicles we see on our roads daily.
People must value life! It cannot be considered normal that every month we count no less than 1-thousand soulless bodies due to road crashes most of which could have been avoided. We will be strengthening our partnerships with other stakeholders involved in Road Safety initiatives. Some of these partnerships are already yielding results such as the iPledge campaign run by Imperial Holdings with us as the Department of Transport.
Through this campaign, Imperial Holdings gets its employees to commit to commit themselves to proper conduct that encourages and promotes safety on our roads. We are also giving full support to the establishment of more Road Safety Councils within our communities.
The role that these Councils currently play and can play in fighting road carnage cannot be over-emphasised. They exist within communities where drivers of vehicles live. They exist in communities where passengers of these vehicles live. Through this initiative, we are saying people must take back their roads for it's only if we all become involved that we will be able to win the war against road carnage.
Chairperson and honourable members,
We want 2012 to be the year of action against those that seek to turn our roads into killing fields. We want drunk drivers to be isolated and have their actions disowned by their own families for their destructive ways are deadly! We want to empower the commuter of public transport to help us change the attitude of the public transport driver.
Passengers must refuse to be transported in a vehicle that doesn't meet the minimum safety requirement standards. Passengers must refuse to be transported in a vehicle that drives at neck-break speed.
Passengers must say no to a driver who is under the influence of alcohol and other forms of drugs. Passengers must work with us in changing the culture on our roads. We urge them to take advantage of platforms that exist to report such abuses. One of them is the RTMC hotline of 0861 400 800. As I conclude chairperson and honourable members
I wish to share with you one of the initiatives we are pursuing to make our roads safer. In partnership with the Department of Basic Education, we are introducing driving lessons as part of life skills curriculum at schools. We want to catch them young before they fall for the societal pressures associated with this world we live in.
A grade 9 student, who on average is 15 years old, is under no pressure to obtain a driver's licence as he or she still has three more years before they become eligible to be legal drivers. We want to prepare them for the road ahead and create a new breed of a driver. At age 17 they obtain they driver learner licence and by the time they pass matric at age 18 they have a legally obtained driving licence.
These are some of the efforts we are making to ensure that we succeed in reclaiming our roads. The various legislations that govern road conduct will continue to be put under the microscope to assess their effectiveness and contribution to safer roads. 2012 must become the year we give expression to the many commitments we make over the years including the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety.
We will also soon take to cabinet our Road Safety strategy through which many of the goals we set ourselves would be implemented.
There are so many things that I would have loved to share with this committee however in the best interests of time I wish to pause here.
The acting CEO of the RTMC will provide more clarity on some of the issues I have raised in my input.
I thank you for your attention!
