Heritage buildings need proper care, but frills are out

As the department of public works, we welcome scrutiny of our projects and finances. Indeed, the very figures quoted by the Sunday Times, “State property splurge” (April 14), were willingly provided by public works. This was neither a scoop, nor a “splurge”. This money was budgeted overwhelmingly for the planned and dayto-day maintenance of public buildings.

The vast majority of expenditure, budgeted over the next one to five years, is for structural renovations and maintenance of parliamentary villages, the parliamentary precinct, the Union Buildings, and a lesser amount for ministerial houses.

These are old buildings: the original parliament dates back to 1875 (the Marks Building offices are over 100 years old); the Union Buildings date back to 1913. They still function because they have been looked after, an expensive business in the case of large heritage buildings

Also bear in mind that the majority of “beneficiaries” of these renovations and maintenance projects are the employees who work in government buildings, who far outnumber the politicians, as well as the public which accesses government buildings for services.

Public works is the custodian of some 90,000 state-owned buildings, mostly providing services to the public. Over the entire portfolio, we have 3,000 projects addressing construction, refurbishment, rehabilitation, renewal and maintenance at an estimated cost of R26bn.

I am not deaf to the sentiments expressed in last week’s article: that we should not be providing “frills” to the politicians when so many are suffering economic deprivation. I have therefore instructed the officials of public works to go through the prestige budget to verify that projects are for essential maintenance and renovation and not for “frills”

We can agree that there is always room for improvement to ensure that the government spends its resources wisely. But one lesson of recent years must be that this should never be at the cost of failing to maintain government infrastructure.

Sabelo Mali, media liaison: ministry of public works

Morocco hoodwinked Munusamy

Ranjeni Munusamy is a highly respected journalist. However, there are silences in her article “Quicksands of diplomacy” (April 14), on Western Sahara where it seems she was hoodwinked by the “… softspoken and gracious” Moroccan foreign minister, Nasser Bourita. The interests of balanced reporting would have been better served had she noted that:

• Morocco has occupied and controlled Western Sahara since November 6 1975;

• Morocco has engaged in a form of demographic engineering by convincing its citizens to relocate to Western Sahara through subsidies and tax exemptions, estimated at a cost of $800m (R11.3bn);

• The original inhabitants of Western Sahara, the Sahrawi people, have been turned into refugees in the southwest Algerian town of Tindouf. Here they are concentrated in six camps on an inhospitable and unhealthy desert plain;

• A legal opinion by the European Parliament’s legal service held that fishing by European vessels in Western Sahara waters (under EU-Morocco fishing agreements) violated international law;

• Much to Morocco’s chagrin, an AU troika on Western Sahara has been established to support UN efforts; and

• Morocco used chequebook diplomacy to ensure a larger turnout for its counterconference in Marrakesh in opposition to the Sadc solidarity conference on Western Sahara hosted by SA.

Perhaps it should not be surprising that Munusamy ignored these “inconvenient truths”; after all, she was a captured guest of the Moroccan government.

Dr Garth le Pere, Kibler Park

Plastic greener than other materials

Calls to ban plastic products is a simplistic response to a complex problem. What’s required is a rational solution to the genuine crisis of plastic pollution.

Many of those leading the call to “wage war on plastic” fail to understand the terrible impact that alternative materials have on the environment. While it’s tempting to imagine a world without plastic as an environmental utopia, plastic in consumer goods uses four times less energy than alternative materials such as metal, paper and glass. In fact, alternatives to plastic packaging would nearly double greenhouse gas emissions.

The fact is that plastic — if disposed of correctly — is one of the most environmentally friendly products there is. And this is where the solution to plastic pollution can be found: in the correct disposal and management of plastic waste.

But to win the war on plastic pollution, everyone in the plastics industry must take part. This includes us as the producers of plastics, but also the government and consumers. We support President Cyril Ramaphosa’s quest to clean up SA, but it can only happen if there is a recycling revolution in this country.

We need the government to urgently fix SA’s inadequate waste management facilities and improve infrastructure for collection and recycling. It can create thousands of new jobs while safeguarding the 100,000 formal and informal jobs that the plastics industry currently provides.

The government can do this if it ringfences the plastic bag levy, which has increased from 3c per bag in 2003 to 12c in 2018. The nearly R2bn raised through the levy so far should have been ring-fenced for its intended purpose: to develop better recycling facilities and incentivise sustainable consumer behaviour.

It’s time to declare and act on the war against plastic pollution.

Anton Hanekom, executive director: Plastics SA

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