Chairperson, hon Minister, hon Deputy Minister, hon members of the NCOP and guests, I take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister and the Deputy Minister on their appointments. Your experience in transport will ensure that the department is in a good state.
Transport is the heart of any country in the world's economy. All of us know that when a country's transport system collapses, the economy of that country also dies. Hon Minister, I am afraid that this will cost you and your department hard work to bring South Africa back on track with a more suitable and cost-effective policy to save the transport situation in South Africa.
A well-maintained transport and road infrastructure allows people to get to work, children to get to school and the population in general to move around. Over the past years, South Africa lost millions of rands on collapsing rail infrastructure. That brought about a big increase in heavy, overloaded trucks on national roads. No one can blame any investor in the country for making use of road transport, because there are no other alternatives that are reliable.
A truck that is 10% overloaded causes more than double the damage of a legally loaded vehicle, amounting to billions of rands per annum.
This brings me to another headache on South African roads. In some of the provinces, thousands of rands were spent on weighbridges that are not in a workable condition because of a lack of officials and skilled people. To close all escape routes on national roads for overloaded trucks, the department must make use of mobile weighbridges that will be more cost- effective. The DA wants to know if provinces have policies to operate these expensive infrastructures. If they were in working condition, there would be an immediate relief in the strain on already overburdened roads.
The DA strongly supports the idea of Transport putting 20 000km of rail in the hands of the private sector on a concession base. This will immediately allow more entrepreneurs to get involved in rail transport and will also create a lot of new jobs in the more rural areas of the country. This will also fit into open-opportunity society, where people who want to become something in life, will be able to provide for themselves and their families. AgriSA and forestry are very excited about this new challenge from Transport. This will also create a lot of new sustainable jobs in the long term for many people in South Africa.
The Minister and the department must look into the problem of shortage of technically skilled people and engineers to work on road maintenance and upgrading. To get highly skilled and professional people in the department, the department should offer market-related packages.
Promises have been made by the department that the taxi recapitalisation programme will scrap about 20 000 old taxis a year. At this stage, it seems that only 5 000 taxis have been scrapped per year. If we look into the budget for this programme, less money is available than in previous years. It will take the department 15 years to scrap all old taxis. That is not workable, hon Minister. A serious new alternative must see the light of day to help the taxi industry to get a face lift. If we look at road accidents on South African roads, taxis are involved in high percentages of accidents. Government must see that all taxi drivers undergo training to get necessary skills on how to drive and manage taxis in all circumstances.
Low-level investment in the infrastructure of our roads contributes to rising backlogs. Hundreds of billions of rands are needed on road maintenance. All studies, including those conducted by the department, clearly show that it is less costly to maintain roads than to rehabilitate them. I am afraid that the department does not have nearly enough money to serve all main roads in South Africa to do necessary maintenance. Therefore, the department must look into other alternatives to create more funds for the maintenance of roads. For example, they must launch a high priority road programme to identify parts of the national, provincial and local road networks with high maintenance. This would bring the backlog down within the short and medium term with a maximum timeline of five years.
Lastly, South Africa has less than one year before the 2010 Fifa World Cup to show the world that we can manage South Africa's transport to the benefit of all citizens in the country, as well as to the world. One excellent example is the upgrading of road infrastructure in Rustenburg, in the North West province, where four major Fifa protocol routes were handed over to the Local Organising Committee by the MEC for Public Works, Roads and Transport for a contract with a value of more than R500 million. More than 480 job opportunities were created by the four road projects for rural- based communities, including women from villages around Rustenburg. May that be the department's challenge in the short term. I thank you. [Applause.]