Chairperson, hon Ministers, colleagues, friends, molweni nonke. [Good day to you all.] Apartheid really did leave South Africa with a severe backlog in education, housing and job opportunities in a spatial framework that institutionalised racial divides in geographic planning and infrastructure roll-out. This left South Africans in 1994 very divided and without the means to take advantage of the limited opportunities available.
An ageing and inadequate transport system was no match for the whole Herculean task of turning an apartheid South Africa into a modern economy capable of providing jobs and opportunities for all. Transportation is potentially one of the great vehicles available to us as legislators and government to bring people closer together, bearing in mind that it is the spatial divide that provides greater access to these opportunities.
Strides have been made in that direction. We have award-winning new airports, as we have just heard, and the decision to purchase new rolling stock for Metrorail and replacing the signalling system with new technology will undoubtedly improve the speed and reliability of trains. This massive infrastructure project will also create jobs and lead to a much needed skills transfer.
A further bonus is that the unit cost of R9 million per coach will be cheaper than the R10 million per coach for Gautrain coaches. The DA will carefully watch the roll-out of this tender, however, as we cannot afford yet another arms deal debacle. The South African taxpayer cannot afford to pay undue donations to the politically connected, being ripped off for another Mercedes 4x4, perhaps, or a saucy deal for Chancellor House. [Interjections.]
I must, however, support the Minister of Transport in recognising, so early, the need to shut down the Road Traffic Management Corporation, RTMC, and voting with the board of shareholders to close this entity, which has been unable to deal with our tragic road death rate. It needs to be replaced - and I am quite sincere in this - with a provincially managed and properly trained police task force. The Minister must be congratulated on seeing the problem early in his term of office as people's lives are on the line.
Now let me turn to the bad. Government's funding models are hopelessly wrong on a number of key infrastructure investments. The e-toll is the obvious one. SA National Roads Agency Limited, Sanral, misleads us by stating that the road maintenance backlog is about R149 billion, which means we have to have new toll roads across the country. Unfortunately for the argument the maths do not add up. I previously referred to the studies by the Automobile Association and Southern African Bitumen Association, Sabita, but if you look also at the annual budget documents provided by the Treasury and also those supplied by the Auditor-General, you can clearly see that between 2003 and 2008 an average of more than R21 billion was collected from the fuel levy, while only R7,4 billion was spent on the roads. That leaves R14 billion wasted by this government on other projects. If you had approximately R14 billion per annum from 1994 till 2010, that gives you about R238 billion of fuel levies which were misused, and we only need R149 billion to fix the backlog. Where is the problem? [Applause.] [Interjections.] Government spent the money and now maintains that we have to pay again to afford our roads.
Today I can reveal another crisis. While Eskom is begging everyone to switch off their heaters and geysers, Metrorail is leaving 200 trains or so switched on all night, with motors running, lights on in all the carriages and in some cases heaters switched on, heating empty trains all night.
When I heard of this shocking waste, I did what Hellen Suzman always said we should do. I went to see for myself. I went train spotting. Here I have a photograph, can you see, can you see the trains that are switched on? [Laughter.] This is 22h30 last Friday night at the Elandsfontein Railway Station. Six out of all six trains that were there were switched on, had the lights on, the motors on and humming while people were shivering in their homes, Minister. This winter, with loadshedding in Gauteng, they can rest safe in the knowledge that just down the road at a local train depot there are hundreds of train carriages piping hot inside for nobody.
Minister, I am sure Eskom is watching this television broadcast and is looking for your phone number to call you about this little problem. I have met with Metrorail staff and they told me that the trains are kept running 24 hours a day with lights and heaters on because their maintenance is so bad that if they switch off the trains, they cannot get them to restart in the morning. [Interjections.] We need an investigation into how much money and electricity is being wasted by this poor maintenance.
What really concerns me about Prasa, however, is that it appears that the management is colluding with SA Transport and Allied Workers Union, Satawu, to keep the National Transport Movement, NTM, from being recognised by delaying a proper audit of Satawu, NTM and other unions to establish which members are actually members of which union at present.
The Passenger Rail Service of South Africa, Prasa, went and fired 1 027 members of the NTM. The firing appears to be unfair dismissals designed to prevent NTM from reaching the threshold required for recognition. Allegations have been made by Prasa regarding NTM members burning trains, but without evidence. Government must play fair with the new unions instead of always protecting and covering up for the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Cosatu. It has been reported to me that Metrorail and Prasa are refusing to cancel monthly deductions from the staff in favour of Satawu when they resign in writing from Satawu. This amounts to an employer and a union colluding to keep the newcomers out. It is morally wrong.
My inspections, research and meetings with unions are, of course, just the job of an ordinary Member of Parliament. The Department of Transport does not seem to believe in that kind of accurate research.
The road death figures are notoriously unreliable. The figures of the Road Traffic Management Corporation show that we have about 14 000 road deaths annually. However, the figures from the National Institute of Mortality Studies, those from the Medical Research Council, together with the United Nations Research Council, show that the RTMC's figures are completely wrong. The RTMC estimated that there were 13 768 road deaths in 2009, whereas this survey by the Medical Research Council estimated that 17 103 road deaths had occurred. That represents a whopping 3 335 dead people that nobody at the RTMC knows about.
The Department of Transport just shrugs and says, oh well, those are the figures given to them by the police. After speaking to medical professionals, I believe that the reason for this grossly wrong number is that the police apparently only record death at the scene. If someone dies in the ambulance or in a hospital later, those figures are not captured. But if you cannot get the figures right, Minister, how do you expect our deployment of traffic police, our drunk driving inspections or roadworthy vehicle inspections to be right?
I must congratulate the MEC of Transport in the Western Cape, Robin Carlisle, and the Western Cape traffic police on their excellent record of reducing the road death total by a whopping 31% since we took office. Deaths reduced from 1 739 per annum in 2008 to an annual mere 1 202 by February 2013. This is a result of using accurate data and getting rid of drunk driving and unroadworthy vehicles. Ask the Western Cape bus drivers if you do not believe me. [Applause.]
My final revelation of gross corruption is that this report tabled today is a report into the massive roadworthy certificate fraud in South Africa. It was commissioned by your predecessor, Minister, hon S'bu Ndebele, and the KwaZulu-Natal department of transport. A private company, AST Africa, was appointed to conduct an investigation and they produced a report with photographic evidence. They looked at test stations and got hold of fake documents and concluded that many tens of thousands of fake roadworthy certificates have been issued by vehicle testing centres, particularly in Gauteng, on the payment of about R1 500 for a fake roadworthy certificate to be issued without the vehicle even being presented for inspection. [Interjections.]
At one testing station in Gauteng, the report states, "If this station operated nine hours a day continuously during this period, including Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, they would have to test a car every six minutes to achieve this total of 12 212 certificates that they issued, and of these 5 740 were actually vehicles that were in KwaZulu-Natal. One operator advertised brazenly in the newspaper, "can organise roadworthy certificate without vehicle. Phone if interested". He charges R1 300; in Stanger. Would you believe? Surveillance was conducted, that Hawks were called in and a national task team was formed by the national Department of Transport, and a few arrests were made.
This vehicle here which, you can see, is a burnt-out wreck, was given a roadworthy certificate. The question I have to ask, Minister, is this: Why, after only a few arrests, was this investigation cancelled? The national task team was shut down and this report was then buried. It disappeared. Many of these testing stations continue to operate and tens of thousands of vehicles on our roads have fake roadworthy certificates.
The death statistics are wrong. The RTMC has not worked. Many coffins on wheels are out there, with drunk drivers and fake roadworthy certificates, and the department appears to be turning a blind eye. What do we say to the mothers of the children who are killed?
Minister, I would like go give you a copy of this report in case they have lost it in the department. [Applause.]
Finally, let me just say that we have a serious vandalism problem when the transformers for the lights on the R21 highway have been stolen three times, one realises how bad the crime is. But one needs a crane and a flatbed ruck to steal an electrical transformer.
Trains are being vandalised in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Eastern Cape because hundreds of kilometres of walling and fencing have been broken down. MPs need only look at the missing fence outside Acacia Park Parliamentary Village, and you will see the problem. There is simply not enough money in this budget, Minister, for walling, fencing and security measures for our transport infrastructure. We need to do better. I thank you. [Applause.]