State Equipment Sits Idle as Farmers Fix Roads

“While farmers themselves are forced to level roads to get products to market, transport workers and ensure that essential services can access rural communities and children can access schools, government equipment has been sitting idle on the side of the road for months,” says Francois Wilken, president of Free State Agriculture

Free State Agriculture (FSA) is expressing serious concern over the poor management and utilisation of provincial road maintenance resources, after a relatively new Bell grader belonging to the State garage has allegedly been parked on the side of the road near Vanstadensrus in the Southern Free State for more than nine months.

According to Wilken, the matter has been reported repeatedly via the official WhatsApp channel for the Xhariep district, but without any visible solution.

A visit to the state garage by a FSA member on a Friday morning to address the matter revealed that – after a search of the abandoned premises – the handful of remaining mechanics responsible for servicing and maintaining the entire fleet of yellow machinery were already busy braaiing so that they could go home early.

“This poor management of a state asset is indicative of the shocking state in which the Free State Department of Community Safety, Roads and Transport is in”, says Wilken. Apparently, there are no funds to pay the service provider registered on the Central Database for Service Providers.

According to Wilken, a local private company in the area offered to load the road grader onto their low-bed truck and transport it to the central garage for repairs at half the cost, but the department does not want to allow this. “When a private enterprise is willing to offer a practical solution at a significantly lower cost, but the state still fails to implement a solution, serious questions about governance, decision-making and accountability must be asked,” says Wilken.

Infrastructure decay

The issue of infrastructure decay and the state’s inability to sustainably manage basic maintenance was recently under the spotlight at the FSA congress.

Piet le Roux of Sakeliga, who spoke about the infrastructure challenges at the FSA congress, pointed out that it has increasingly become a reality that communities and the private sector can no longer simply accept that the state will deliver basic infrastructure services effectively. According to him, a concerted effort is needed to hold those with management responsibility to account.

“Free State Agriculture has tried over the years to work constructively with the provincial department and find solutions to infrastructure problems. We still want to work together, but cooperation can only work when we listen to each other and address problems,” says Wilken.

Call on Government

According to Dr Jack Armour, Commercial Manager of FSA, the organisation has repeatedly called on the government to consider public-private partnerships as a practical solution to the province’s infrastructure challenges. “The only proposal currently coming from the government is for farmers to do the work at their own expense, while the government only grants permission – and then on its own terms.”

FSA’s position is that if farmers are forced to take on government responsibilities and carry out road maintenance work, they should be fairly and competitively compensated for work carried out to the required standards and engineering specifications.

“The Department constantly refers to the requirements of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) and BBBEE legislation as obstacles. At the same time, tenders for re-gravelling and road maintenance are often issued for an entire district. This makes little practical sense for farmers who are willing to help, but who do not necessarily have the capacity to mobilise equipment and workers over great distances,” says Armour.

“Our members want to be farmers first and foremost, not full-time road contractors. They are willing to play a role in their local community where needed and help maintain roads near their farms, but they cannot operate their own farms and act as unpaid, part-time road repair workers for the state.”

“The maintenance of provincial roads is not the responsibility of farmers. Farmers cannot be expected to continually take on state responsibilities and finance them out of their own pockets,” says Wilken.

FSA will continue to hold the provincial government to account for its responsibility to properly maintain roads, allocate budgets for this purpose and ensure that the necessary resources and personnel are available to carry out this mandate.