Barry Streek
A minimum amount of R3-billion is needed to build new roads in the rural areas outside commercial farming areas to overcome apartheid backlogs, Minister of Transport Dullah Omar has told Parliament.
It has been established that 62% of the roads in densely settled areas, 85% of the roads in rural villages and 91% of the roads in scattered settlement areas in the former homelands are “inadequate”, but in the farming areas where the needs of white commercial farms has historically been prioritised, only 32% are classified as “inadequate”. In the scattered settlement areas there are no roads of high or intermediate quality, and 9% are of basic quality.
Based on the maximum assumption of need (the estimate for the total spend required on rural road maintenance, rebuilding and new construction nationwide), R17-billion was required.
Omar said that to meet this challenge, the Moving South Africa study developed an approach wholly consistent with the strategy currently implemented by the government.
The strategy states “that an effective developmental approach to roads must form part of an overall, integrated infrastructure package so as to ensure efficient total spending and consistent approaches across line function”.
“The approach says that roads investment must be directly linked to community sustainability and development. It is clear that an approach which indiscriminately throws money at the problem is neither possible nor sustainable,” he added.
Omar said the Cabinet has recently made available approximately R100-million through the presidential poverty alleviation programme to his department, in conjunction with the Northern and Eastern Cape provinces, to maintain and upgrade key rural roads in areas where a package of integrated development initiatives is in the process of being delivered.
-In reply to a question asked in Parliament by African National Congress MP Cas Salojee, Minister of Welfare and Population Development Zola Skweyiya said that R203-million is allocated under the 1998/99 poverty relief programme to provincial and national projects. Of this amount, R145,1-million has been allocated to 2 538 national projects, aimed at all the provinces.
He said the programme has a definite bias for the deprived areas of the country or “poverty pockets”, and “to substantiate this fact, the poorer provinces with larger rural components had far bigger allocations, for example the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Province”.
l Meanwhile, Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza said the process of restitution claims would be fast-tracked by setting specific timetables for the completion of the claims and the projected cost to the state of settling each category.
She wants to speed up the time it took to settle restitution cases, principally by resolving as many cases as possible by administrative means.
Didiza said she will review the land acquisition grants currently offered by the Department of Land Affairs and restructure the grants “in such a way that they are able to support rural livelihood, small-farmer development, local authority commonage acquisition, share equity schemes, and the establishment of large-scale black commercial farmers”.
She also wants to improve the agricultural support services which were available to land redistribution beneficiaries.
ENDS