The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) General Secretary Jack Mazibuko says government needs to fix the rail infrastructure to make it possible to move the transportation of goods from road to rail.
Mazibuko was speaking during an engagement between Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises and organised labour on the governance, financial and service delivery challenges that Transnet is facing.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) made various presentations to the committee.
Mazibuko spoke about the transformation of the rail sector.
“From us to move from road to rail, the first thing that we need to do is we need to fix the infrastructure. And let’s look at how this road freight was able to run away with murder within Transnet. We have the lines that we call a branch line. The branch line is where Transnet was playing a role to transport your cranes, to transport at short distances, goods.”
“The clients have run away. They have opted to buy trucks, they have opted to use road freight to transport their goods to the same ports, because Transport is unable to. Now those things affect the performance of Transnet,” adds Mazibuko.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana also said government was devising ways of using money from the Criminal Asset Recovery Account to fight crime including illegal mining and construction extortion.
“A recommendation has been made to the cabinet to continue using money from the fund to deal with illegal mining and construction extortion and to make South Africans safer. The South African Police Service (SAPS), South African National Defense Force (SANDF), Border Management and the Financial Intelligence Centre have been allocated money from the fund,” says Godongwana.
The Minister says government had received nearly 70 applications from municipalities requesting to have their debt written off.
Those whose applications have been approved have a combined debt of more than R56 million.
Godongwana says the debt that municipalities owe Eskom will be written off over a three-year period, with conditions.
“Twenty-eight applications have been approved; the remainder are being assessed and verified with provincial treasuries. The ultimate goal is the profound transformation of these municipalities, by empowering them to build financial resilience, amplify their capacity to generate sustainable revenue, and rekindle a culture of paying for services rendered.”
Below is the Minister’s MTBPS address:
