Chairperson, I would like to thank the Deputy Minister, Comrade Jeremy, MEC for Transport, Ndosi, colleagues from all the provinces, the director-general and all the speakers present for their contribution and for what they have added to the debate here today. Your contributions are very valuable to us as we go forward.
As Comrade Jeremy Cronin has said, we are going to have constant engagements on matters of transport because transport is one area where we really want to move in a very co-ordinated fashion. As we engage the taxi industry, the bus industry, rail, and the commuter organisations, so too Members of Parliament and members of the NCOP must themselves be engaged in similar interactions with their communities, so that all of us are really on the same wavelength.
Provincial experiences need to be fed back to the national department and the experiences that we pick up as we interact with the communities need to be shared with everyone so that, when we move, all of us are fully conversant with all the issues because we have shared knowledge. It's quite important for us to share knowledge because knowledge empowers all of us. Knowledge would thus not have come from one side; it would have come from our collective experience.
I would like to comment on a few issues. Allow me to start with the issue of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act. It has become quite an urgent matter, because this Parliament and the NCOP passed that legislation and you cannot have legislation that was passed and is then parked or just shelved. The experimentation that we had agreed on way back, I think, in 1998, was to start with Johannesburg and Tshwane, and thereafter roll-out had to occur. One cannot experiment for 10 to 12 years and thereafter have legislation that is actually not being implemented.
What is also spurring us on is the big story that broke yesterday about the experiment that Johannesburg has been going through where, because of administrative hiccups, we had to refund some R32 million to people who were not properly billed, and so forth. We can't have a system that works that way.
The Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act, Aarto, and the demerit system are actually quite important for us and we want to make the best of it. There must be an area in South Africa where abiding by the law is second nature to its citizens. This should then cascade to other areas. I am sure that my colleague Ndosi will know that people who abide by the law in terms of one aspect tend to abide by the law in terms of other aspects as well. But, once you start breaking the law in one aspect, and you get away with doing so, then breaking the law could become second nature.
The demerit system of Aarto is actually meant to ensure that the present carnage on our roads is dealt with. Like HIV and Aids and other medical problems, our transport problems are scientific problems, so we can actually find a cure. But the carnage on our road can't be put on exactly the same level as a scientific problem. For example, the UK has more cars than us, but experiences far fewer crashes. A number of other countries, with the United States, Germany and Australia being prime examples, have far more cars with far fewer crashes. In South Africa we have between six and seven million cars. Anyway, we have a population of 48 million, in a country that has very wide roads crossing open countryside; people who drive in much more congested circumstances drive with a greater awareness of safety.
Therefore we can do something about this problem. Part of our strategy is to create the understanding that the driving licence a driver might have one day is not something he might possess the next day. That understanding is actually the key. Via the demerit system we want to ensure that the driving licence becomes a document that a person knows can be lost through their own actions. Some people have been complaining about traffic officers hiding under and behind bushes alongside our freeways. We will have to look into that.
Maybe the following will happen: Maybe our traffic officers are actually going to be giving you a demerit and visiting you at home and saying that they have been following you. You have got your licence cancelled. Can you just tell us how you got home? How did you get home today, because your licence is cancelled and your car was being driven by one person? We were following you. How is it that you are driving when your driving licence is cancelled?
This will teach the driving public that what follows on the cancellation of a driving licence might very well be imprisonment, if they drive in defiance of a cancelled or suspended licence.
The other area that we need to look at quite seriously - and MEC Cele spoke about this - is the visitation of victims. Part of what you discover when you visit those victims is that most of them don't even know anything about the Road Accident Fund. Now, as you leave here and fill up your car, 64 cents per litre of the cost of that fuel goes to the Road Accident Fund. It is supposed to be a very standard insurance. It is an institutionalised insurance that is supposed to ensure that a person injured on our roads does get paid compensation. We cannot have a situation where, on the one extreme, the Road Accident Fund has just paid R500 million to a Swiss national, while on the other, people cannot get paid R50 000 or even R25 000. They actually get nothing. There is something seriously at fault with that. Of the R11 billion that was budgeted for the current year, R2,5 billion went to the lawyers specifically, and R900 million went to the doctors that actually attended to the people who were injured on the roads. So, of the whole R11 billion, only R900 million was actually paid out to settle doctors' bills. There is something that we need to correct about this.
In conclusion, the issue of 2010 is really an opportunity to thank the members for their contribution and to say that public transport must indeed be one of the key legacies of 2010. That legacy cannot just be urban; it must cover the whole country. It is quite an important thing to do. We want to take the opportunity to thank the portfolio committee and the study groups. It is clear that we need to continue working the way we have, because there is so much to be done in this Department of Transport. We want to assure you that, as we roll it out for 2010, the key feature of our preparations will be the public participation of as many of ourselves as is possible. The department wants to ensure that.
One of the key aspects that we will discuss between ourselves and the provinces is ensuring that every school and every clinic is reachable by road. By 2009-10 there should be no longer a school or a clinic that can't be reached because the road doesn't reach there. So the construction of rural roads is one of the main tasks of making this country a developed country. Thank you very much for the participation. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.
Business suspended at 10:44 and resumed at 14:02.
Afternoon Sitting