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6 July 2007

Chairperson of the NCOP
Minister of Transport, Honourable Jeff Radebe
Colleagues, MECs from other provinces
Honourable members of the NCOP
Ladies and gentlemen

It is pleasing to participate in this Policy Debate on the Transport Budget vote at times when transport has occupied a very central role to our efforts of bringing about a shared economic growth.

Our slogan: Transport, the Heartbeat of South Africa's Economy augers very well with this year's national government's theme of Renewing our National Our Pledge: A National Partnership to Build a Better Life All.

This is because at the core of building a better life for all is the 2014 Vision of halving poverty and unemployment by the year 2014. This programmatic slogan of Transport: The Heartbeat of South Africa's Economy, therefore positions us, and properly locates our role, as the transport portfolio in the economic activities that are already dominating Government Programme of Action in this Second Decade of Freedom, leading to 2014.

Accelerated Infrastructure Development for Building a Life for All was our central programmatic slogan we announced when we tabled our provincial Budget Vote on the 26 March 2007. In this input, we will therefore seek to highlight our work with regard to transport infrastructure and improvement measures to transport services.

Chairperson, our current budget allocation for roads is R932 million. It is the single largest allocation and alone it accounts for 58% of our entire Departmental Budget for this financial year 2007/08.This has risen from R515 million in the last financial year and therefore represents an increase of 81%.

Whilst we appreciate this substantial raise, we continue acknowledge that it is still not enough considering the huge backlog we have in roads. This backlog is estimated at R8 billion. Another factor that has to be seriously taken into account is the fact of above 50% escalation of market prices in the construction industry. The significantly increasing traffic volumes, both freight and private vehicles, on our roads in recent times also have a negative impact on roads. Free State tends to be seriously affected because we are geographically located at the centre of the country.

Our strategic approach for addressing the overloading and traffic growth on our roads includes the following:

* the construction of traffic control centre which include permanent weigh bridges at strategic points of the province
* to complement an effective overloading control plan through the utilisation of mobile weigh bridges
* to design our road network in such a way that it accommodate the envisaged growth of heavy trucks on our roads.

During this last financial year, as part of our efforts to improve our roads network infrastructure, we over spent with R279 million on roads alone.
These budget allocations and expenditure are deeply rooted in our policy trajectory of utilising infrastructure development as a catalyst for economic growth and development. This policy trajectory has gained momentum since we commenced this Second Decade of Freedom in 2004. It is therefore in this context that roads infrastructure development has progressively gained prominence.

Honourable chair, since April 2006, a total of 309 kilometres of secondary roads was re-gravelled. 315,100 metre square paved roads and eight bridges were repaired. As part of these projects, we have increased our roads construction and maintenance in depressed rural areas of our province. The importance of a developed roads infrastructure in economically depressed rural areas cannot be overemphasised. It will lower the cost of economic activities in the agricultural sector and help revive other industries that have potential in our rural areas. Roads infrastructure and development in rural areas help ease the movement of people and the delivery of social services such as education and health. These improvements also help people with easy access to main corridors as well.

The other social and economic benefits that have accrued from our roads projects execution is that we have and continue to increase the EPWP (Expanded Public Works Programme) content in terms of labour intensiveness, contractor development and skills development. We are therefore implementing leanerships that are covering 107 learner contractors who are involved in the construction and maintenance of roads. On completion of the leanerships, we will therefore create clear exiting opportunities that will empower contractor learners further. A total of 3 640 temporary work opportunities have been created in the past financial year in roads alone.

Chairperson, in order to sustain the momentum generated by the winning of Makwane Access Road as the best EPWP project in the country, we will implement the following five projects collectively worth R155 million for this year, along the same model of Makwane Access Road:

* Monontsha Border Post access road
* Access road to Swartwater Dam-S1502
* Access road to the Dome as Phase 2
* Access road to Koppies Dam
* Access road to Thaba Phatsoa.

Three projects standout as our main transport infrastructure projects outside roads this financial year. These are N8 Road Development Corridor, the Bloemfontein Transport Inter-modal Facility and the Harrismith Freight Logistical Hub.

My department has commenced with the construction of a 19 kilometres (kg) palisade fence along the N8 corridor. This project through EPWP principles has this far created temporary employment for 150 locals.

The N8 corridor project will also include the revitalisation of the commuter rail service between Bloemfontein, Botshabelo and Thaba-Nchu, covering a distance of 70 kg. Our initial study indicated that already in on a daily basis, there are more than 40 000 people travelling on this road. This study also show that the introduction of an integrated public transport network with commuter rail serving the line between Botshabelo/Thaba-Nchu and Bloemfontein would bring about major reduced passenger fares, safer commuter trips and would furthermore reduce the current operational subsidy requirement for buses and in favour of commuter rail. We are working the South African Commuter Rail Corporation to get the project to unfold.

It is also pleasing to report that we have made tremendous progress towards concluding the renewal of the Inter State Bus Line contract which will include new empowered partners in taxi operators and small bus operators.

The construction of the Bloemfontein Inter-modal Facility connecting rail, buses and taxi services will be one of our major transport infrastructure projects as we move towards 2010 Soccer World Cup and beyond. A total budget of R230m is available in this current financial year for this project and is mainly managed by the Mangaung Municipality as a Host City. We are, however, playing an active and collaborative role in the project. The actual construction of the Inter-modal facility is expected to commence before the end of this financial year.

Honourable Chair, the Harrismith Logistical Hub is certainly one of our transport infrastructure projects that will give concrete expression the slogan: Transport: The Heartbeat of South Africa Economy. It will link with both Durban and Johannesburg through the N3 Corridor. This is a project we are pursuing in partnership with the National Department of Transport and is one of the AsgiSA projects for the Free State. We are about to conclude the process of establishing a Provincial Data Bank. This Data Bank will therefore serve as an important tool for the management of freight in the province. We hope to launch this Freight Data Bank this coming October as part of the October Transport Month Campaign.

Since the launch of the Taxi Recapitalisation in October last year (2006), we are surging ahead with the actual implementation of the Recap. We are in process also addressing the challenges that have arisen. These include the slow pace of scrapping, problems related to uplifting of operating licences by taxi operators and tensions among associations.

The process of the formulation of the Transport Master Plan that has been initiated by the national Department of Transport has been warmly embraced in the province and we are therefore active participants in this process. In conclusion, Honourable Chairperson, as we said we when we began this input, the achievement the economic and social goals of 2014 Vision remains our strategic tasks; we dare not lose focus. Let us therefore work harder to position transport as great contributor to a shared growth and development. As the province of Free State, we therefore endorse the national Transport Budget Vote as tabled.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Transport, Roads and Public Works, Free State Provincial Government
6 July 2007
Source: Free State Provincial Government (http://www.fs.gov.za)