Sanral vows to favour black business

Communities will be given support in maintaining their own roads

SANRAL’s new transformation policy will ensure black owned businesses benefit from the R20billion contracts the roads agency has for the current financial year.

This news was shared by newly appointed chief executive officer Skhumbuzo Macozoma while addressing the business fraternity at the East London ICC on Sunday.

He said the roads agency had so far spent R33-billion on roads since 2009.

“We actually don’t care where the money comes from. Going forward for every national road we construct there must be a community development project.

“If communities want access roads or schools they must get them. If you take a few hundred million from a budget of R9-billion that will be spent in the Eastern Cape and do community development the project won’t collapse,” Macozoma said to applause.

He said Sanral was making road safety one of its pillars.

Macozoma said Sanral wanted to give opportunities to black businesses and dispel the notion that if you put a black person in charge things collapse.

“We need to bring development to our people. We want to accommodate black business with our new transformation policy. We have spent a lot of money with white business.

“We have spent less than 25% of R100-billion on black businesses and we are not proud.

“More of our money must go to our people,” he said. The CEO said there needed to be application of logic and strategies to ensure black people benefited from Sanral.

Macozoma said Sanral would get more aggressive in demanding that black people owned construction companies and getting rid of whiteowned monopolies.

“We will design our projects so that black people get work.

“We want to promote joint ventures and the blacker the joint venture, the more work you will get from us.

“The less black the joint venture the more we are going to force subcontracting to black-owned businesses,” he said to applause.

Macozoma said Sanral was going to give development support to SMMEs so that they would be able to compete with white-owned businesses.

He warned that he was a straight talker and people should not be surprised if he was removed as CEO.

He said Sanral would not take over new roads since it lacked the staff complement needed for this but Sanral would equip provinces to maintain their own roads. —

Picture: ZOLILE MENZELWA MAKING CHANGES: Sanral CEO Skhumbuzo Macozoma at the East London ICC, where he addressed black-owned businesses on the road agency’s transformation policy that would see them benefit in future from contracts