Transport Department falls short of R127.4 billion needed to fix SA roads

In both the Transport Portfolio Committee meeting on Tuesday and an Economic and Business Development Select Committee briefing on Wednesday, the Department of Transport told MPs that the cost of repairing South Africa’s roads is estimated to be R149 billion.

Acting Director-General of the Transport Department, Mawethu Vilana, said the backlog is beyond their budget. Of the Department’s R48.7 billion budget for 2014/15, R21.6 billion has been allocated to road transport.

“The single biggest challenge we face is municipal road infrastructure... poor roads are in imminent danger of structural failure,” Vilana said.

Only 10% of our roads are considered to be in “very good” condition, 30% are described as “good”, 40% are in “fair” condition, 10% are described as “poor” and 10% are “very poor”. This translates to more than 173 000 km of municipal roads being in poor to very poor condition, 16 402 km of which are paved and 156 687 km are gravel. The provinces with the worst roads are the Northern Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

Vilana also said that SANRAL managed over 22 000 km of roads in South Africa. With only 14% tolled, the rest are “funded through public purse” explained Vilana. He added that the Department was considering involving the private sector in tolling.

On Tuesday, the Transport Portfolio Committee Chairperson, Dikeledi Magadzi, said that despite a recent announcement that e-tolling was going to be reviewed in Gauteng, people still had to pay their e-toll bills. A large portion of the money made from e-tolls went towards repairing roads in the province.

Over and above the urgent need to upgrade our road infrastructure, there is also a big concern around the death toll on roads. Vilana told MPs that the Department of Transport will be implementing and monitoring a 365-Days Road Safety Programme, as opposed to “just over Easter”. The Department was also drafting a new Road Safety policy that it hoped to have implemented in 2016/17.