Road safety agency ‘should be closed’
CAPE TOWN — The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), which is tasked with road safety and reducing SA’s appalling accident rate, should be closed down and its functions assigned to provincial transport departments, Democratic Alliance (DA) transport spokesman Ian Ollis said yesterday.
He was responding to Sunday newspaper reports that all nine provincial MECs who sit on the shareholders committee of the agency had unanimously decided that the RTMC should be shut down for failing to fulfil its mandate.
Neither the RTMC nor the trans- port ministry would confirm this or give any details of the recommendations that emerged from a recent meeting of the shareholders committee, which is chaired by Transport Minister Ben Martins.
However, Western Cape transport MEC Robin Carlisle reportedly said the shareholders committee had received two letters from Mr Martins following its meeting. The first said that the corporation would be closed by the end of this year, and the second said only the Cabinet could make the decision to close the RTMC.
Mr Martins’ spokesman Tiyani Rikhotso said yesterday the RTMC’s shareholders committee was concerned about the financial mismanagement of the agency and its sus- tainability. The mismanagement of funds had affected its financial stability, but any decision on its future would be Cabinet’s to make.
Internal control weaknesses and abuse of procurement procedures led to R360m in irregular expenditure in the 2008-09 financial year, including the irregular use of more than R200m of e-Natis transaction fees (for example motor licence fees), which were supposed to be paid over to the Department of Transport, but were instead used for operational purposes.
Mr Ollis said the DA had for a long time maintained that the RTMC should be shut down. “It has been around for nine years and we don’t believe it has done anything for road safety in SA. There has been no improvement in road death figures over this period. We think the powers of the RTMC should be transferred back to the provinces and the metros where they used to be, and which can exercise more direct management over traffic police on the highways and on the roads.”
Centralisation of road safety programmes could not be as efficient as locally managed ones, Mr Ollis said, citing the Western Cape’s reduction of road death figures by 31% from April 2009 to February this year through proactive policing, including testing more vigorously for alcohol and roadworthiness.
Mr Ollis noted that the RTMC had been financially bankrupt for the past three years, and to stay afloat it had reduced staff to such an extent that there were staff vacancies of up to 30%-40%.
Free State transport MEC Butana Komphela told newspapers the RTMC “has not been functionally very well” and that a unanimous decision had been taken last month to request that it be closed down.
Mr Komphela said the decision to call for the agency’s closure was “purely based on the effectiveness of the corporation”. He said the shareholders committee wanted the duties of the RTMC to be taken over by the national Department of Transport and provincial government structures. With Sapa.