Hon Speaker; Deputy Minister of Transport, Mr Jeremy Cronin; Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Transport, hon Ms Ruth Bhengu; hon Members of Parliament; MECs of Transport from the provinces; mayors present; the director-general, Mr George Mahlalela; Chairpersons of the Boards of all Department of Transport entities; CEOs and MDs; Chairperson of the South African National Taxi Council, SANTACO, Mr Mthembu and the Secretary-General of Santaco, Mr Taaibosch; members of the media; ladies and gentlemen, today, 13 April, marks 58 days to the start of the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
Next month, when the first group of media representatives, visiting fans and officials arrive in large numbers for the Fifa World Cup, our transport operation will kick into overdrive. We know that, of the 64 matches to be played during the tournament, 15 will be decided either at Soccer City or at Ellis Park. Another six will be played in Tshwane. This brings the number of matches to be played in Gauteng alone to 21. Furthermore, semi- final venues in Durban and Cape Town will host a total of seven and eight matches, respectively. So, three provinces will host over half of the total number of matches of the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
Cognisant of this reality, our plans are centred on transporting the visiting fans, but also the local spectators, who we know are critical to the success of any Soccer World Cup. Fan parks constitute the mass character of the Fifa World Cup. In Germany in 2006 fan parks and public viewing areas added to the festive nature of the tournament and ensured the active participation of the locals.
Many fans will use our world-class airport infrastructure to fly from city to city, yet many more will travel by road and by rail. In the course of travel, we want transport to be a catalyst for the formation of a lasting memory of South Africa and the 2010 Fifa World Cup. The task of the transport system is, therefore, to provide a seamless, multimodal service throughout the World Cup period to facilitate movement to all parts of the country.
How do we plan to contribute to this? The backbone of our transport plans for the World Cup consists of long-distance rail, aviation, taxis and buses. As indicated above, Gauteng will host the bulk of the matches. Johannesburg, therefore, becomes the natural hub for the nine host cities, all of which will be accessible from any part of the country.
The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, Prasa, will play a pivotal role in this global event. Government already invested R25 billion in passenger rail services over the last MTEF period to get us ready for the World Cup and beyond. This programme increases to R38 billion in the current MTEF, and the investment is also intended to arrest the decline in infrastructure and address the availability of rolling stock. Prasa is upgrading key stations and critical infrastructure. The refurbishment of 2 000 coaches and the roll-out of the South African Railway Police are key to making South Africa fully compliant in support of this major event. During the World Cup, over and above the normal services of 308 train sets, there will be 240 additional train sets arranged. A total of 85 sets have also been booked for private use, and 98 trains are on standby should they be required.
As regards buses, government has provided R1,4 billion in Treasury guarantees for Autopax to recapitalise its fleet for 2010 and for the sustainability of the service in the long term.
In Johannesburg, Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay, infrastructural construction of the Integrated Rapid Public Transport Network, IRPTN, is well on track. Other cities, including eThekwini and Mbombela, have invested in public transport infrastructure. Up to 2010-11, the commitment to the IRTPN is over R4 billion in total.
Rea Vaya's Phase 1A, which operates between Johannesburg and Soweto, carried 20 000 people per day in early December 2009, up from 11 000 in August 2009. We use 28 articulated buses with a carrying capacity of 117 passengers each, and six complementary buses with a carrying capacity of 81 passengers, to operate 203 trips per day.
Over and above the normal transport services, dedicated transport services for the World Cup will include 418 trains, 420 buses allocated to Match, the Fifa-accredited hospitality agency, 200 buses for the Fifa family, 360 general spectator buses, in addition to 1 100 buses in operation, all to be managed by the Operational Management Entity.
Providing the infrastructure is a necessity, but it is co-ordination that will ensure that the country delivers a successful World Cup. In order to co-ordinate and manage the implementation of the Transport Plan for the Fifa World Cup, we will have a 2010 Transport Command and Call Centre based in Gauteng. A service provider has been appointed to manage the Operational Management Entity, and over the next few weeks we will be finalising the operational plan. We are heading for an event that will, in transport terms, become the greatest operation ever to be undertaken on our continent.
During our Budget Vote in July last year, we quoted one of the foremost thinkers of our time, the former President of India, Dr Abdul Kalam, who is passionate about technology, children and development. After a talk delivered by Dr Kalam, a 10-year-old girl came up to him for an autograph, and he asked her what her ambition was. She replied without hesitation that she wanted to live in a developed India. The ambition of that 10-year old is shared by the 49 million people of this country and 800 million on the continent. Like the rest of the world, we want development.
Speaker, during this financial year the transport sector must play its role in moving this country from underdevelopment to a state of development, and from being a developing country to being a developed one. To turn this into concrete reality we have identified six outcomes, which are: Transport infrastructure, public transport, safety, rural development, job creation, and the environment.
As regards transport infrastructure, the Road Infrastructure Maintenance Fund will deal with the maintenance backlog that currently faces the transport sector at provincial and municipal level. The current state of our road infrastructure, particularly in the provinces and municipalities, reflects the lack of sustained investment in maintenance over many years. We will develop a ring-fencing mechanism which will set aside funds earmarked for maintenance, and a passenger rail investment plan will ramp up investment in rail infrastructure and rolling stock.
We are also finalising details of the high-speed rail link between Durban and Johannesburg, and we plan to take this matter to Cabinet during this financial year. We will explore the same option for Johannesburg and Cape Town.
The Moloto Corridor is another project that we have identified as a priority, and we have registered the project as a Public-Private Partnership, PPP. We are working with the Public-Private Partnership Unit in Treasury to finalise the project plans. Furthermore, the new King Shaka International Airport at La Mercy will be launched on 1 May this year at a cost of R6,7 billion. We must say something about the future of the site of Durban International Airport, DIA. A task team, including the Department of Transport, the province of KwaZulu-Natal, eThekwini Municipality and the Airports Company of South Africa, ACSA, have compiled a report on the land-use options for the DIA site. This report will be ready at the end of April this year. We will issue a request for "expressions of interest" documents, which will take into consideration all the proposals brought forward by interested parties.
The public transport strategy, which Cabinet approved in March 2007, details the case for the implementation of a public transport system in South Africa. We cannot continue to build more roads and parking in the cities, as this simply encourages more traffic over the medium term. No city in the world - Shanghai, London, Paris or New York - has solved urban mobility challenges through private car use.
Secondly, switching car users to public transport, walking and cycling will make a major contribution to our global responsibilities of protecting the environment. Thirdly, public transport provides a greater level of safety and stress-free travel than private transport. We believe that the transformation of public transport is incomplete without taxis, which move more than 60% of our daily passengers in the Republic of South Africa. In this regard the National Joint Working Group on public transport, which includes the leadership of the minibus taxi industry and government, has a mandate to address all matters of concern to the taxi industry. We have no doubt that the National Joint Working Group will position the taxi industry to be a major player in transport services, such as the Integrated Rapid Transit Networks.
We agree with the 2020 vision of the South African National Taxi Council, Santaco, that the industry must extend itself from one mode to being a multi-modal industry. Out of our engagement must emerge business entities which can be contracted by government and the private sector.
The South African National Taxi Council will be holding an elective conference at Sun City in May, and our duty is to applaud the direction that we have taken together. This process will also create a predictable investment environment.
As part of our broad-based economic empowerment we will support initiatives of the taxi industry in developing their enterprises in the establishment of co-operatives, which will enable them to migrate from the informal nature into viable and bankable business entities. This will be a key focus area this financial year.
The department has finalised the draft implementation strategy and action plan to achieve an accessible public transport system for people with disabilities, the elderly, pregnant women, parents with prams and children. The country has also adopted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Optional Protocol, which requires us to ensure equal access to transportation.
Road safety is not what you do to a community. Road safety is what you do with a community. Speaker, we pride ourselves on being a nation built on ubuntu, the spirit of humanness and consideration for others. The task of ensuring safety on our roads is not just that of the taxis, government, business or the other person. The duty to ensure safety on our roads is everybody's business.
In this regard we will, by the end of May 2010, have formed community road safety councils in all nine provinces. Road safety councils are critical in our drive for safer roads and involve the mobilisation of all stakeholders towards one vision and plan for the creation of safer roads and safe road- user communities.
Working with the Ministers of Basic and Higher Education, we will intensify road safety education in our schools. Every 16-year-old learner can now have a learner driver's licence. Every 18-year-old must have a driver's licence if we are going to be characterised as a developed country.
In this regard we are pleased that by July this year we will have appointed a new service provider for the tamper-proof driving licence card. The new licence specifications will introduce unquestionable integrity levels and a driver's card that is accepted internationally. As part of ensuring safer roads we will implement the Administration and Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences, AARTO, this year. The current traffic law enforcement system is not effective.
Our courts are already overburdened with many criminal cases and traffic offences are not prioritised by the justice system. Courts are inundated with criminal cases such as rape, murder and robberies. This has placed a tremendous strain on our court resources, resulting in traffic offences committed, during 2008 only being heard in October 2010 to 2011.
This is further exacerbated by the lawlessness on our roads. For the Johannesburg Metro Police Department, there are 201 779 traffic offences on the court roll for 2010 for offences committed during 2008. A total of 53 809 traffic offences could not be accommodated and have court dates pending after October 2010 to 2011.
For the Cape Town Metro, a total of 132 226 traffic cases are on the court roll up to October 2010. Traffic offences during the current year will of necessity have to be heard during 2011 up to 2013. Drivers simply don't bother to pay traffic fines and do not even bother to go to court because they know that nothing will happen to them. We say that time is over.
This House will be aware of the R500 million the Road Accident Fund awarded to one individual - a Swiss national who was injured in a motorcycle accident while on holiday in South Africa. He had originally claimed R4,5 billion from the Road Accident Fund. While the final settlement is a lot less, the Road Accident Fund would have been bankrupted had the original claim of R4,5 billion been granted.
It has now been confirmed by our courts that we were right in seeking to limit general damages claims to serious injuries and to cap high-income claims to R160 000. These amendments were implemented through the Road Accident Fund Amendment Act in October 2008. We are also certain that a Road Accident Fund which operates on the basis of "no fault" is the best option for a country such as ours, which has limited resources and a high number of beneficiaries.
We know that those who know are able to access the Road Accident Fund and those who do not know are left as they are, without even getting funeral expenses. And we know that part of our struggle is the struggle against ignorance. Hosea 4:6 states: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." We need this knowledge to be spread around so that people are able to claim what is rightfully theirs.
At the beginning of Easter there was an accident in which eight people were killed on Moloto Road. At the end of Easter there was the passing away of the Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Molefi Sefularo. We pay our greatest respect to Dr Sefularo and his family over his tragic passing.
Speaker, in July last year, together with other transport ministers from the African continent, we attended the international Africa Make Roads Safe Conference held in Dar es Salaam. We then continued to the Millennium Development Goals, in which we declared that 2010 is a decade of road safety.
The Global United Nations Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Moscow, Russia, declared that we will move from here, Dar es Salaam, to Moscow. Road safety has now, for the first time ever, and rightly so, been elevated to the urgent attention of the world.
The greatest tribute we can pay to the memory of Dr Sefularo, his family and the families of all those who have lost their loved ones on our roads, is to do everything to end the carnage on our roads. Our road safety strategy and the public transport strategy are our pillars to implement actions that turn the tide and start reducing road crashes. Domestically, national and provincial road safety must become our key priority. We are going to target specific towns and municipalities and other hotspots where we can make the greatest impact to save lives.
On the aviation safety side, the airlift strategy is to promote trade and tourism to and from the Republic to increase the contribution to economic growth. It is also aimed at developing a framework ... [Interjections.]