Joburg roads budget takes a hefty R200m cut

The Gauteng Roads and Transport Department has slashed its road infrastructure budget by R200 million, allocating money that could be spent on repairing potholes and roads to other priority provincial projects.

With pothole repair costs at an estimated R500 per square metre, this money could have been used to fill about 400 000 potholes in the province.

Budgetary cuts were a prevailing feature of the Roads and Transport budget for 2010/2011, presented yesterday to the provincial legislature by MEC Bheki Nkosi.

Roads and infrastructure funding has been decreased from R1.73 billion to R1.53bn, while the Gautrain will get R2.5bn in the next financial year, significantly less than the R6.5bn it received this year - a planned decrease as the project nears completion.

The construction budget will decrease by R117 418 000 to R645 350 000, while the budget for road planning projects will drop by R106 345 000 to R81 561 000.

Nkosi said the government had inherited a road maintenance backlog that would cost about R4bn to address.

"We have put in place strategies to reverse the deterioration (of the roads). But the provincial fiscus will never be adequate to deal with these plans because there are needs in all departments."

He said budget allocation was an issue of "difficult choices".

Roads and Transport committee chair Mxolisi Xayiya was concerned that most of the 2009/2010 capital projects would be started only in the new financial year and that the budget allocation had decreased despite the state of the province's roads.

The budget for road infrastructure was not adequate to meet provincial targets to improve infrastructure.

But he said private sector partners would help to contribute R5.5bn towards the construction and upgrading of roads.

While the budget for maintenance as a sub-programme of roads infrastructure would be cut by R157m from the previous year's allocation, the department said it had an interim road maintenance strategy that would see the eradication of potholes in the province.

But DA MPL Fred Nel said the reduced maintenance budget of R427m meant that Gauteng's roads would deteriorate to such an extent that it would cost even more to rebuild them.

Nel said the department had reallocated R'.74m from its maintenance budget to fund the Gauride programme for the Confederations Cup last year.

DA spokesman on roads and traffic Neil Campbell said almost all of last year's transport projects had to be carried over to this year, yet the road infrastructure budget had been cut by more than R200m.

"This year's budget must thus first be allocated to last year's projects, which means that our backlog will escalate and we will be unable to maintain the roads that we have."

He said the R1.6bn generated almost entirely by motorists through licence or tax revenue was not used to fund road infrastructure.

The Star

Posted at 08:43AM May 19, 2010 by Editor in Cities and Towns  |