Reports that 40 000km of the KwaZulu-Natal road network have disappeared are ”untrue and misleading”, provincial transport department head Kwazi Mbanjwa said on Tuesday.
Mbanjwa said the decline in maintenance of provincial and national roads started in the 1970s and KwaZulu-Natal had ”inherited roads from a number of authorities in the province”.
”The true extent of neglect in the rural areas of the province only became evident after the abolition of the self-governing territory of KwaZulu and the full integration of the province during 1994,” Mbajwa said, reacting to media reports that up to two-thirds of the provincial road network did not show up on official records.
University of Cape Town roads expert Don Ross said that in devolving the responsibilities of the old administrative structures many roads slipped through the cracks.
”We desperately need a national inventory, using global information systems and satellite tracking,” Ross said. The classification system would go a long way in determining a national roads budget, and help direct who paid for roads in rural and other areas, Ross had said.
However, Mbajwa said provincial legislation was enacted in 2001 to provide a legal framework for declaring a new provincial network. The process of declaring the new 42 000km network was at an advanced stage.
According to Mbajwa the department held monthly meetings with rural road transport forums and road safety councils in the province to discuss road priorities, including infrastructure developments and safety features.
He said there was no way the roads could have ”slipped through the cracks” as the department had also developed a democratic and consultative approach.
Each year ”large audiences” attended report-back summits held by the MEC at which achievements of the department were declared and new initiatives announced. – Sapa