South Africa: Sanral to lend support to R22bn roads maintenance programme
29 February 2012
Creamer Media's Engineering News - February 28, 2012
The South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) has been pulled in to improve delivery on the R22-billion S’hamba Sonke (Moving Together) provincial and municipal roads maintenance programme, which is due to run until 2014.
Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele acknowledged on Tuesday that only R1.7-billion had been spent on the projects since the programme’s launch in April last year, well short of the R6.4-billion allocated for the 2011/12 fiscal period.
Such underspending was part of a broader theme within the public sector, with Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan estimating earlier that only 68%, or R178-billion, of the R260-billion set aside for infrastructure in 2010/11 was actually spent as planned, owing to weaknesses in the State’s infrastructure capacity.