Hon Chairperson, Deputy Chairperson, hon Minister, hon members and special delegates, as Salga, we are pleased to participate in this debate of the transport Budget Vote, as this is yet another opportunity for us to contribute regarding matters that directly affect roads and transport at local government level.
Hon Chairperson, we trust and hope that we will be able to continue to offer input and assistance to the Minister and her department. South African Local Government Association, Salga, would like to request the hon Minister to please consider including the following matters as priorities for this year.
The first one is the roads proclamation. Unproclaimed roads primarily in rural areas cover about 140 000 kms, which constitutes about 24% of the 593 000 kms of gravel road infrastructure network, and it remains a major and stubborn issue that must be addressed urgently. The consequence of unproclaimed roads is that monitoring of the condition and maintenance of this vast portfolio of roads falls between the cracks.
Consequently these roads are not upgraded and developed, which disadvantages municipalities and communities residing in those areas and using these specific roads. Despite these challenges, we would like to acknowledge the work of the Department of Transport through its rural road asset management grant. However, alignment needs to be sought between the data collected through this grant and the proclamation of the actual roads.
The sooner the proclamation process of identifying the role of district municipalities is completed in so far as road development is concerned, the better.
The second point is the funding of rural roads. Hon Chairperson, we wish to affirm that, with the exception of toll roads, the roads infrastructure is generally funded from taxes. In the case of local government, this tax is levied as property rates tax. Unfortunately, in the rural context, such tax is practically nonexistent.
Whilst the national fiscus contributes a limited amount through the Municipal Infrastructure Grant for the provision of basic levels of road infrastructure on behalf of fundamentally the poor, this funding is wholly insufficient. This is a result of a gap in poor households that are not reflected in the Statistics SA data as well as businesses that do not contribute to the costs of road infrastructure in their specific areas.
Since businesses and households in the rural areas are not paying an equitable share of their taxes, urban ratepayers end up subsidising the cost of roads for middle and high-income households and businesses in rural areas.
Funds from taxes are also limited, which further contributes to the deficit on funding and maintenance of rural road infrastructure. We therefore urge the department to work with National Treasury and Salga to find solutions to this challenge of underfunding of rural municipal roads and municipal roads in general.
The third point is getting freight off the roads. Hon Chairperson, Salga appreciates the declared focus of government over the next years on upgrading rail infrastructure services. The South African Local Government Association would like the hon Minister to stimulate a modal shift of freight from road to rail. This recommendation has been mentioned a few times today already. To this effect, the hon Minister needs to finalise the process of developing the rail policy for South Africa in order to guide future investments in rail for both freight and passenger movement.
The fourth point is efficient public transport. The South African Local Government Association notes the public transport allocation of R5 billion to be spent in 13 cities on planning, building and operating integrated public transport networks. We would like to appeal to the hon Minister also to prioritise efficient public transport in areas outside these 12 metropolitan and secondary city areas, as stipulated in the current Public Transport Strategy and Action Plan.
Although the majority of commuters are in these areas, public transport also needs to be promoted in rural and semi-urban areas. This requires a review of the current public transport strategy so that it is inclusive and nondiscriminatory in the future roll-out of public transport throughout the country.
The fifth point concerns the capacity within municipalities. Hon Chairperson, we welcome the programme through which 120 civil engineering graduates are being trained and are to be absorbed by municipalities. Towards ensuring the effective absorption of these and other graduates by local government, we need to determine a minimum benchmark organogram for each category of municipality, based on the functions of public transport and road infrastructure management. Obviously, we would also like to see these graduate programmes extended to the other spheres of the infrastructure, like water, electricity and sanitation.
The sixth point is the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project, GFWIP, and electronic tolling in Gauteng. Hon Chairperson, it is the view of local government that charging users for the use of such infrastructure is acceptable revenue collection. Organised local government has been advocating for the consideration of socioeconomic and traffic impact assessment studies pertaining to proposed tollroads around metropolitan spaces.
We are pleased that Sanral now has an obligation to consider these issues in planning future projects. However, since these provisions came after the current phase of GFWIP as well as the electronic tolling in Gauteng, the detrimental impact of the traffic diversions onto municipal road network infrastructure remains to be seen.
In conclusion, hon Chairperson, Salga believes that attention to the five inter-related matters, namely: Roads proclamation; funding of rural roads; getting freight off the roads; efficient public transport and capacity- building within municipalities will go a long way towards meeting the mandate of the department and contributing to service delivery at the local level.
All these matters will contribute towards the National Transport Master Plan as the macro sector plan of the Department of Transport. Thank you. [Applause.]