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The Department of Police, Roads and Transport in the Free State should come clear with the reason for appointing often under-qualified contractors to more than R700 million worth of contractors over the past three years to fix potholes in the province, rather than to properly fund and capacitate the government's already established and underfunded road district authorities.

Road district authorities in the province have, over the past few years, bled skills and expertise and have not been funded sufficiently to employ the number of staff needed to fulfil its duties.

Now, the department has indicated that it spent more than R10 160 221.30 just in the 2020/21 financial year on site establishment fees for Contractor Development Programme (CDP) companies. Site establishment fees is a standard in most larger contracts for the purpose of assisting the companies to get on site and to ensure that they have all the necessary equipment to honour the contract.

However, if the department made use of their own employees and expertise within the road district authorities, such a site establishment fee would not have been payable and this money could have been allocated to fix new roads.

It is ironic and questionable that it is the policy of the ANC in the Free State, a party that is usually hostile towards the private sector, to outsource these contracts to 71 companies – most of which were only established in the past 10 years, instead of funding the departments within the state that already had the skills.

To put figures into perspective, this amount paid just for site establishment could have roughly bought a total of 7 257 tons of asphalt premix to fix potholes across the province before a single contract was awarded if the department's own road authorities were given the job.

In 2018/19, claims of R561 393.72 were paid out in civil claims against the department, R438 588.36 in 2019/20, R203 565.87 in 2020/21 and R606 298.91 in 2021/22. A total of R1 809 846.86. This does not seem like a significant amount, but taking into account that:

a) not all road users know that they can claim from the department; and

b) that this amount represents roughly 1 500 non-fatal pothole accidents over 4 years;

it amounts to at least 1 claim against the department per day. The actual number of accidents on Free State roads is undoubtedly much higher.

The DA urges road users who suffered damages due to potholes on Free State roads to submit the claim form that can be found here. The DA will further engage the department on their policy regarding the funding of road district authorities.

Issued by DA Free State member of the National Council of Provinces, George Michalakis