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Peters urges business to help inform National Transport Master Plan

Transport Minister Dipuo Peters

Transport Minister Dipuo Peters

Photo by Duane Daws

10th October 2013

By: Samantha Herbst

Creamer Media Deputy Editor

  

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Transport Minister Dipuo Peters has urged members of the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci), and other platforms like it, to provide government with knowledge and input on ways to improve South Africa’s transport infrastructure ahead of the remodelling and imminent launch of the National Transport Master Plan (Natmap).

Addressing delegates at the Sacci 2013 annual convention at Gallagher Conference Centre, in Midrand, on Thursday, the Minister revealed that the Department of Transport (DoT) was redeveloping Natmap, originally initiated in 2009, and that the master plan would respond not only to the needs of the department, but to industry as a whole.

The approval of the master plan had previously been delayed as it had to be realigned with government's National Development Plan (NDP).

As a result, the department is calling on stakeholders in the various sectors that have high transport demands, such as the mining industry, to participate in the development of Natmap by providing government with relevant information to help inform an outline of the plan.

“Let us respond to the needs of our industries and let us be informed by [business’s] investment potential.” Peters added that government did not want to move ahead with the implementation of a new strategy without industry’s support, only to be informed at a later stage that its goals were not “informed by reality”.

She told Engineering News Online that the DoT was keen to know what industrial sectors needed when it came to the transport of goods and related services, as well as what their projections were for future investment and economic growth strategies.

“We are, therefore, appealing to you for partnerships so that you can feed government with information,” she told delegates, adding that government did not want to “plan in a vacuum”.

Peters further mentioned that the country’s endeavour to build a nonracial, nonsexist and democratic South Africa called on all stakeholders to work together to protect the environment while exploiting the country’s resources.

“It is in the same context that [the Department of] Transport envisages the transportation of coal by rail, taking it away from road transport. This is a part of the national freight and logistics strategy.”

However, the Minister cited the freight industry’s argument that it takes longer to transport goods by rail and argued that these types of viewpoints were the ones government needed to hear to determine where South Africa’s transport infrastructure development should be in 2050.

“We need to ensure that generations to come see that we did not rest on our laurels,” she said.

Concluding her address, Peters loosely referred to the much-contested implementation of e-tolling in Gauteng, under the auspices of the South African National Roads Agency Limited.

The Minister appealed to delegates to understand the context under which this particular
project was being implemented and urged stakeholders to provide workable solutions to the development of roads that would embrace the user-pays principle, as indicated in the NDP.

Edited by Chanel de Bruyn
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor Online

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