On Friday, January 31, Richards Bay municipality stopped supplying power to the coal terminal. It appears this was due to cable faults at the municipally administered substation. The result is that Richards Bay Coal Terminal has been unable to function. SA Inc has lost R200m/day in coal export earnings.
The municipality was hoping to have power restored by February 9, which would still have meant a loss of R2bn in export revenues.
At a time when the funding of SA’s current account deficit is shaky, this is clearly a case of “shooting ourselves in the footâ€.
In the latest SA Institution of Civil Engineering (Saice) report card, major urban areas got C grades for roads, water, sanitation and solid waste management while other urban areas got D or E grades. Local electricity distribution got a D overall. According to Saice, a C indicates infrastructure is satisfactory for now.
A D means the infrastructure is “not coping with demand and is poorly maintained. It is likely that the public will be subjected to severe inconvenience and even danger without prompt attention.†An E shows the “infrastructure has failed or is on the verge of failure, exposing the public to health and safety hazards. Immediate attention is required.â€
The problem is not confined to municipalities. Two weeks ago, I drove from Johannesburg to Newcastle with my mother and sister. The journey takes you from Gauteng, through Mpumalanga and the Free State into KwaZulu Natal. I cannot offer much of an opinion on Gauteng’s or Mpumalanga’s roads as the journey is on the excellent Sanral-maintained highways — a portion of which is behind the e-toll controversy.
Just inside the Free State, we turned off the N3 to join the R103. There is a 500m stretch of dirt road between the two that is atrocious. Despite the occasional pothole, the R103 is largely okay. It is only 60km later, when you turn left onto the R34, that the trouble begins. The road has been rebuilt in places in the past four years. Nonetheless it has repeated “Potholes 5km†signs.
It would be easy to blame the heavy trucks that use the road. But as you cross the border into KwaZulu Natal, the road becomes smooth and safe.
The glaring conclusion is that the work done was substandard. Either it was specified incorrectly or the contractors underdelivered without being held to account. Whichever the reason, an adequate provincial road engineering department would have been a big help.
An April 2012 presentation by the presidential infrastructure co-ordinating commission highlighted the need to beef up skills in the public sector to support capital expenditure. A shortage of engineers is the biggest problem. The presentation raised some interesting questions.
According to the report, of the 5515 engineers then employed by the public service, 3348 were employed by Eskom. How many smaller municipalities have no engineers?
The report also showed a large number of highly paid administrative bureaucrats in some municipalities and too few engineers. Why does the City of Johannesburg have 713 financial managers but only 211 engineers? As a comparison, the City of Cape Town has 54 financial managers and 348 engineers.
The latest data from Municipal IQ shows that there were 155 service delivery protests in SA in 2013. While this was slightly down from the highest number ever recorded of 173 in 2012, it was much higher than the thirdworst year of 2010, when 111 protests took place.
Ultimately, engineers are required to resolve many of the issues behind service delivery protests. Part of the problem is the education system. But another part of the problem is a municipal bureaucracy that doesn’t prioritise the hiring of engineers. The result is detrimental to all municipalities’ residents — and the SA economy as a whole.
