The DA in Limpopo has reiterated its call for the province to dissolve Road Agency Limpopo (RAL) and have its functions taken over by the department of Public Works, Roads and Infrastructure.
The entity has been characterised by its failure to meet its mandate, gross mismanagement and poor financial controls. Despite these glaring failures the average annual salary for an employee is R900 000.
RAL’s personnel expenditure is R74.897 million for 83 employees which includes 6 top management, 5 senior management, 24 qualified proffesionals,20 skilled workers, 21 semi-skilled workers and 7 unskilled workers. These employee costs are expected to increase by 30% in the 2022/23 financial year due to filling of vacancies and salary increases.
Roads are meant to play a critical role in the economic growth and development in the province but so far RAL has failed to address the demand for paved roads. Limpopo only has 31% paved roads and 69% of the province’s roads remain gravel. Districts like Capricorn and Waterberg have 73% and 79% gravel roads respectively.
It is estimated that RAL will need R138 billion to upgrade all gravel roads in the province and that at current funding levels will take 115 years to address the backlog. This is largely due to neglecting maintenance over the years.
RAL has received an unqualified audit with findings for five years and continues to fail to achieve a clean audit largely due to non-compliance with legislation and failure to prevent, fruitless and wasteful expenditure. The entity incurred irregular expenditure of R5.3 billion including previous years expenditure that Provincial Treasury has refused to condone.
It is clear that RAL has proven itself to be a perennial poorly run entity that is an unnecessary expense and has failed to provide services to the people of Limpopo. It is the only provincial road agency and there is no need for it. We have written to MEC for Public Works, Roads and Infrastructure, Nkakareng Rakgoale, to register our concerns.
Ridding the province of this expensive, wasteful and ineffective entity is the only way Limpopo will get road infrastructure that will drive the economic development people in the province need.
