Public Works dept on campaign to revive dilapidated harbours

Public Works Minister Thulasi Nxesi says the department is on a campaign to revive some dilapidated harbours in three of the four coastal provinces.  These are KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and the Northern Cape.

Nxesi has been addressing the two-day Small Harbours and State Coastal Property Investor Conference currently underway in East London. He says plans for the redevelopment of these harbours are in the final stage.

“Part of the thinking was we can’t concentrate on what we call ocean’s economy only in one province which is in the Western Cape and leave the entire whole other coast and we don’t exploit those resources. That was part of the thinking.”

Nxesi also says that they are going to launch a massive investigation into its property lease agreements across the country.

“Some of those contracts you can’t even find any documents, but you have to ask what happened here? How did you get this land ? And it needs all those investigations and we will continue to do that. We have seen it in the building in big cities; even some of the building that used to belong even prior 1994 were transferred into the names of some of people. We don’t know how it happened but we are dealing with this property thing in a professional way now.”