Chairperson, in many respects the previous financial year can be classified as a bit of an annus horribilis for the Minister. You became a Minister in a hot seat with the cloud of the Mercedes-Benz "donation" hanging gloomily over your head, and you inherited a Ministry, I might add, that was suffering the effects of poor management brought about by undercapacity, skills migration, incompetence and underinvestment.
At the time when we welcomed you to your position, I must say that I expected more of you. Knowing your no-nonsense approach, which you practised in Kwazulu-Natal, I expected that you would open up the communication gap left by your predecessor, Jeff Radebe. The hon Minister came to me afterwards and said he agreed to make himself more contactable, and he even gave me his card and cellphone number. I promise you, that thing does not get answered.
Our first test appeared to have been ignored for many months, despite letters and documents which I delivered to his office in an effort to raise the alarm about what was happening in the Road Traffic Management Corporation, RTMC.
Despite subsequent assurances given in this House some six months later, the matter became public in June 2009, I might add. Nothing substantive has transpired, and the embattled RTMC limps along despairingly, dogged by allegations of corruption, mismanagement and the fruitless and wasteful expenditure of public monies. It is no wonder that it does not even merit a mention in your department's new strategic plan.
However, this is not the only dilemma facing our Minister, and despite the DA's positive contributions towards the budget debate over many years, his department is now faced with massive underfunding - and I am now talking outside of the Fifa projects and their legacy of spending that you had over the past five years - and a number of dysfunctional entities.
The RTMC aside, it is common cause that the Road Accident Fund, RAF, is technically insolvent to the tune of R40 billion and even with the "no fault" system being proposed, the demands on the fund and the public institutions that you proposed to support it cannot be sustained at the current high level of fatalities and accidents in our country, and that's a fact. Millions of rands were spent by the RTMC in conducting stakeholder workshops on road safety in each of the nine provinces, without as much as even involving the portfolio committee or reporting back to it, to say: "look, these were the outcomes". It is indicative of how dismissive they are of finding solutions to this very serious problem.
Yet ever-mounting deaths and injuries occur daily on our roads without any serious fresh or innovative ideas to counter what appears to be a failing Arrive Alive Campaign. My deputy, the hon De Freitas, will discuss some further thoughts on this matter later in the debate, but the bottom line is that we cannot continue to lose the more than 12 000 lives a year that we are losing on our roads.
The time has come for all of us to put our heads together to find a solution to saving lives, and the DA would support any initiative for an urgent road safety indaba in South Africa, Minister, not in Kenya or abroad. We need to establish the facts of what is causing this, and then, once we've got that, we will know how to redirect or reappropriate funds towards a safer road environment in our country.
The RTMC and RAF are not the only clouds hanging over the Minister's head. The Minister has also failed to roll out the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act. This Act was passed in 1999 with a view to introducing a demerit system. To date it still hasn't happened, and you don't have to look far to understand why. If the controversial e-Natis database, which is run by a steering committee while both the national and the provincial levels claim ownership of its use, isn't working, then fines won't be paid and we won't be able to contact the people who have committed these offences.
This contract, by the way, is continuing; it has just been extended, and no database has been handed over to the department yet, as has been indicated in an answer to me. This same e-Natis involved itself in massive overexpenditure before your time, sir, and in order to recover that, National Treasury introduced a fee on every transaction that involved the licensing of cars, to the amount of R36 per transaction. That R36 should have been collected by RTMC and paid back to Treasury, and that has not happened. Something is horribly wrong here and no doubt they will require further interrogation and explanation to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Scopa.
Let me dwell on some other areas of concern which need urgent intervention. These were raised at the strategic workshop which the chairperson spoke about. The Cross Border Road Transport Agency, CBRTA, is dysfunctional. In its existence it has had seven chief executive officers. At this critical time of the Fifa Soccer World Cup we can't even determine how many people are coming across the border as passengers, so that we can actually do some sort of planning. The South African Maritime Safety Authority, Samsa, has had allegations of mismanagement and corruption circling around it for a number of years. Not only has that not been adequately addressed but there's a forensic report which apparently doesn't give us any answers.
The supposedly self-funding entities like Airports Company of South Africa, Acsa, Air Traffic Navigations Services, ATNS, and the Civil Aviation Authority, CAA, all have balance-sheet deficits arising from capital expenditure which was necessary to meet airport construction, expansion, renovation and recapitalisation for the purpose of international safety requirements, all of which they cannot afford or recover from tariff increases alone. All of these entities applied to their respective regulating authorities for tariff increases but were declined.
The question now arises: Where and from whose budget will these deficits be funded? The Independent Ports Regulator faces a similar dilemma and has insufficient funding to fulfil its mandate. The same can be said of the Railway Safety Regulator.
Turning to other entities, the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, Prasa, also claims to have insufficient funds to meet the safety requirements of its rolling stock, signalling and perways. The ironic thing is that Transnet, from whom Prasa concessions its line usage, charges Prasa R300 million per annum, yet Prasa expends millions upgrading and maintaining the very infrastructure that they use. This does not sound right to me, and it is a typical case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
In any case, Minister, rail freight services should be under the jurisdiction of your Ministry if we can ever claim to provide South Africa with a seamless and integrated transport system. One could say the same for air and port entities. The DA has lobbied for this integration for many years and will continue to do so - it makes total sense and I trust that you will follow this up with your counterparts in public enterprises.
While on the topic of these other entities, the South African National Roads Agency Limited, Sanral, is the only entity that claims not to want any more money. That sounds very strange to me, given maintenance backlogs which your department confirms at R156 billion for provincial and national roads together. Yet they are borrowing money on the open market.
Despite this, they are doing a good job, I might add, in keeping our national roads in reasonable condition, albeit at the motorist's cost. I agree there is no such thing as a free road but for how much longer can we carry on tolling and tolling every time a section of road reaches the end of its lifespan or needs reconstruction?
We in the DA like what you and your department are saying about a dedicated road fund. After all, this has been part of our policy proposals to your Ministry for a number of years now, and I am sure Mr Cronin will confirm that. The time has come to consolidate all the fund streams for this fund - let's call it a central asset management fund, for lack of a better word.
The public and road users out there don't know the difference between a pothole and bad road surface occurring in the national, provincial or municipal networks, yet they all contribute to road taxes via the general fuel levy.
Nobody is better placed than Sanral to do the necessary national audit of road conditions, determine the methodology of spending priorities and contract out the necessary work in the three spheres of government. Believe me, Minister, this is the only way forward.
As was mentioned by my colleague there, engineering skills just do not exist at many of the provincial and local authority levels and collectively Sanral, with its high skills base and experience, will be able to optimise both the scarce human and financial capital required to keep our roads safe and pothole free.
Regarding the department's entities, Minister, new board appointments are required and many of these entities need a talking to by you, because clearly their roles are more about collecting the cheques at the end of the month and rubber-stamping management reports, as opposed to contributing to the objectives of the entity and ensuring good governance.
I say this in the knowledge of what I have reported to you in my speech today: Too many of your entities are becoming financial burdens on the department. We rely entirely on you to keep a tight rein on these boards and on their chairpersons, who report directly to you.
For instance, very few of the chairpersons attend the presentations by their chief executive officers at the various portfolio committee budget and annual report hearings. This is a worrying trend. Furthermore, the department's representation on these boards has little or no power to intervene or promote your department's policy in an ex officio capacity.
Finally, let me just discuss two of the other aspects of your annus horribilis. The first is the continued underfunding - unless Scopa agrees to appropriate more funds - of the bus subsidies. I am aware of the National Treasury directives in this regard but I think it is time to rethink this funding model. We cannot continue having shortfalls year after year and no provision for budgetary increases.
The DA is of the belief that subsidising of public transport is essential. It happens throughout most countries of the world, but many of these countries have looked at subsidising the commuter, as opposed to the operator, as a way of ensuring the optimum and fair use of the available resources. Whether your communities rely on rail or whatever mode of transport it might be, you need to find a model to deal with that matter. [Time expired.] I thank you.