By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has admitted that government is concerned that municipalities were failing to prioritise maintenance and upgrades of infrastructure.
In his weekly letter to the public, Ramaphosa highlighted that South Africa had good quality infrastructure, but in far too many instances it was not being properly maintained and upgraded.
He added that infrastructure plays a key role in ensuring economic growth and the alleviation of poverty.
However, proper and effective maintenance needs to be conducted for this infrastructure to meet the nation’s development goals, with infrastructure investment decisions having to meet the growing demand and e upgrade properly.
Last year, the South African Institution of Civil Engineering gave the country’s social infrastructure a D rating, with E being failed or failing. Passenger rail scored particularly low, achieving an E,” the president said.
“We continue to witness the detrimental consequences of failure to maintain public infrastructure. We are seeing accidents, disease outbreaks and other tragedies that, in a number of instances, have been associated with dilapidated infrastructure.”
He said the maintenance of public infrastructure was often the responsibility of local government.
The National Treasury recently reported that slightly more than half of the Municipal Infrastructure Grant was being spent by municipalities.
Ramaphosa said this grant was for upgrading and building new infrastructure and rehabilitating existing infrastructure.
He explained that at the last meeting of intergovernmental forum the President’s Coordinating Council, in June, it was agreed that greater accountability from municipalities that consistently underspend on their conditional grant allocations was necessary.
Part of the problem was that municipalities, especially smaller municipalities, lack implementation capacity, he said.
“However, there are municipalities that are spending conditional grants successfully and timeously. For example, about 91% of funding allocated to municipalities to fund reconstruction and rehabilitation after floods in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal was spent by the respective municipalities,” he said.
Ramaphosa said this illustrated that with the necessary support, technical assistance, planning and coordination, the problem of municipal underspending on public infrastructure could be overcome.
Ramaphosa announced that construction was underway on several bulk water, housing, energy and roads projects.
He explained that together with better infrastructure maintenance, government was determined that these investments would make a big difference in people’s lives.