Taxpayers deserve value for their money
HAVE you ever had a favourite item of clothing that you would wear all the time? In most cases, you would wear it until it was in tatters but, somehow, you couldn’t get yourself to part with your favourite item.
Well, this is exactly what the administration in Gauteng is doing. They have decided not to do proper, regular maintenance until it has reached the stage where it is beyond repair. Despite having a department in the province solely responsible for ensuring that infrastructure like schools, hospitals, libraries and clinics are built, the pace at which this happens is slow.
Shoddy workmanship, going over budget and not delivering within the set time frame are the order of the day for the administration.
More often than not, schools, hospitals, clinics and libraries are opened amid much fanfare, and while everything looks nice on the outside, the cracks start showing after only a few weeks.
A prime example of this is Mayibuye Primary School. The school was built on a sewage line, and the cracks in the building structure started showing before it was occupied.
This meant that taxpayers had to fork out additional money to fix something that should have been done correctly in the first place.
Furthermore, the so-called business forums also want a piece of the pie. Companies awarded contracts by the government are often held to ransom by the so-called business forums. Intimidation becomes the order of the day and contractors battle to complete the projects within the stipulated time frame and budget.
Another problem is that the appointed contractor fails to complete the work. The project will be abandoned and the government has to appoint a new contractor, delaying the project even further.
The lack of infrastructure maintenance also includes other infrastructure like water, electricity and roads. The province is experiencing an increasing occurrence of prolonged water outages due to load shedding, pipe bursts because of a lack of maintenance, theft of infrastructure and vandalism.
While the maintenance of sub-stations and water infrastructure falls under local government, the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG), through the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, should intervene to ensure that municipalities use their budget wisely for regular infrastructure maintenance.
Instead, Premier Panyaza Lesufi announced during his State of the Province address that where municipalities were failing to maintain their roads, the provincial government would step in to fix the potholes and resurface roads.
This is concerning as the service will be paid for twice – through the municipality and the GPG. All this is doing is putting a big plaster on a problem that will remain unresolved.
This is why it is of utmost importance that a proper plan be put in place to ensure regular maintenance of infrastructure and that only competent contractors, capable of completing projects on time and within budget, are appointed.
The DA has a master plan to fix the infrastructure. The plan is to establish a multistakeholder Integrated Infrastructure Management Unit that would overhaul all planning, monitoring, implementation activities and infrastructure maintenance. In addition, the DA would use legislative and financial tools to improve municipal services by entering into partnerships with municipalities to assist with maintenance backlogs.
Engaging with the private sector is also key to improving how we maintain our infrastructure. This would allow us to work with universities and civil society so that resources could be adequately allocated to the provincial government to help manage the property portfolio.
We would also use technology to improve the understanding and resolution of constraints that hinder the completion of projects on time and within budget.
An open portal would be set up for all to view the progress and details of all infrastructure-related activities to ensure efficiency and value for money.
Gauteng residents deserve a government that is committed to ensuring that every rand spent on infrastructure projects is value for money.
This can only happen when the DA is voted into power.