The ANC is deliberately sugar-coating the performance of the Department of Transport by sanitising the Budgetary Review and Recommendation Report (BRRR) of the Portfolio Committee on Transport.

The DA is in possession of both the draft BRRR produced by Parliament but rejected by the ANC, and the amended report with which it was replaced by the ANC members of the committee.

The two documents differ extensively with the amended version omitting or altering crucial information on the performance of the Department of Transport.

This latest stunt shows how the ANC continues to undermine the authority of Parliament.

The DA will demand that all omitted information as originally produced for the committee, be re-inserted before the report is adopted. If this does not happen, the DA will take this matter up with the Speaker of Parliament, Max Sisulu.

The amended report is also silent on the targets not achieved:

• Programme 1: Administration - a target to reduce the vacancy rate from 32% to 0% could not be achieved.
• Programme 2: Integrated Transport Planning - reporting of performance information in the Annual Report posing a challenge given that it is not aligned with that in the APP, as well as that of the 31 planned targets in this programme, 21 (68%) were not achieved.
• Programme 3: Rail Transport – under-reporting due to key performance indicators listed in the APP (18 in total) are noticeably absent in the Annual Report (only reporting on 10).
• Programme 4: Road Transport – only managed to reduce road accident fatalities by 0.79% (110) against a target of 30%. Only creating 42 919 full-time equivalent jobs against a target of 90 000. No reporting on the 15 000 bicycles promised to rural schools a part of Shova Kalula.
• Programme 5: Civil Aviation Transport – 18 (72%) of the 25 planned targets were not achieved.
• Programme 6: Maritime Transport – 9 (41%) of the 22 planned targets were not achieved, one of which is a potential driver for job creation.
• Programme 7: Public Transport – only 35% of targets were achieved, 65% of targets were either partially met or not met.

The ANC is trying its utmost to decontaminate the poor performance of the Department of Transport and suppress the issues that need to be documented and addressed going forward.

We cannot allow our democracy and the oversight role of parliament to be dictated from Luthuli House, or the truth to be withheld from South Africans ahead of the 2014 elections.