Chairperson and hon members, I stand here on behalf of the Minister of Transport, who is abroad on government business. After the publication of the White Paper on the National Transport Policy in 1996 the National Land Transport Transition, Act 22 of 2000, was promulgated, together with other related legislation. It then came into effect in December 2000 and constituted ground-breaking legislation in various areas involving land transport. The Act was transitional because certain issues required finalisation at the time, including funding, conversion of permits for public transport services to operate into licences, and registration of minibus taxi associations and operators.
Since 1996 the National Land Transport Policy has evolved and the Act needs revision. Areas of the National Land Transport Translation Act, NLTTA, that require revision include the following: The new public strategy and action plan approved by Cabinet in 2007 must be applied along with other policy documents that have appeared since 2000. Concerning a new dispensation for tourist transport, I want to say that concerns of provinces, industry associations and so on need to be accommodated.
The NLTTA is now due for transformation into a final Act. Policy documents and reports, which have appeared since the 1996 White Paper, were collected and analysed, and interviews have been held with a wide range of stakeholders, experts and interested parties at the cutting edge of transport service delivery.
Research indicated that the fundamental approach is formulated in the White Paper and the NLTTA has not been substantially changed. For example, regulations of road-based transport services must be plan-based. Functions executed by various institutions in all three spheres of government should be combined where possible and rationalised. Municipal planning authorities should also be responsible for execution, rationalisation of services, and management of funds. Consolidation of responsibilities, by assignment if necessary, should be pursued to achieve the aforementioned goals.
The national and provincial spheres should retain policy setting, co- ordinating, monitoring, supervising and funding functions. The legislation should promote uniformity and avoid a plethora of diverse provincial and local laws. Accordingly, a national land transport strategy document, as input for the drafting of the Bill, was prepared and discussed with stakeholders and the Bill is based on that strategy document. The purpose of the Bill is to provide for the final transformation restructuring of the national land transport system. The main focus of the Bill is public passenger transport, which is defined as including all land transport modes, namely road as well as rail.
The Bill does not deal with rail institutional and infrastructural issues as these will be dealt with later on in specific rail legislation. It provides for the incorporation of rail service level planning and liaison between planning authorities and the South African Rail Commuter Corporation.
The Bill does not generally deal with freight issues except in regard to planning freight routes, and routes for transporting dangerous goods. When the Bill was published for comment in the Government Gazette and a participative workshop was held, a number of institutional issues were raised mainly by the National Treasury and by Gauteng and Western Cape provinces.
The concept in the NLTTA of having transport authorities as distinct legal entities has not been adopted by most metropolitan municipalities and aspirant metros, and has proved to be problematic in the light of local government legislation that appeared after the NLTTA. The Department of Provincial and Local Government identified the need for the terms "public transport" and "municipal public transport" that appear in Schedule 4 of the Constitution to be defined in more detail. Intensive discussions with the DPLG followed and the following changes were made to the Bill at the committee stage: the concept of transport authorities has been deleted from the Bill; municipal transport functions will be executed by the appropriate categories of municipalities to which other national and provincial functions can be assigned in terms of the Constitution. The Bill now contains more detailed provisions on the role of the different spheres of government. Two issues to note in this regard are the following: The bar subsidy function which is situated at national level at present in relation to existing bar contracts, and is executed by the provinces on a basis of delegation, may be assigned to appropriate municipalities by the Minister. This is subject to section 156 (4) of the Constitution and sections 9 and 10 of the Local Government: Municipal Systems Act, 2000. In the meantime they will remain with the provinces.
The functions relating to operating licenses which are currently executed by the provincial operating licence boards will be assigned to appropriate metropolitan municipalities and aspirant metros by the Minister. This is to achieve the objective of the strategy document to consolidate functions and promote accountability. Hon Chair, thank you very much, and I commend the Bill to the House. [Applause.]