Minister Patricia de Lille: Public Works and Infrastructure Dept Budget Vote 2022/23

• Published date: 24 May 2022
• Publication title: South African Official News

Today in tabling the new financial year budget, I will also reflect on what has been achieved in the last financial year.

Apart from the devastation caused by the COVID 19 pandemic, more tragedy has struck with extreme flooding in four provinces and the destruction of buildings in the Parliamentary Precinct with the fire in January 2022.

We are processing the final report on the damage caused by the fires to buildings in the Parliamentary Precinct which we received on 20 May on the restoration work and related costs.

KwaZulu Natal and Eastern Cape Flood Disaster Interventions

The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI), has been involved in five work streams and interventions to assist in the reconstruction efforts in KwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Cape to mitigate the effects of the flood disaster.

A database of over 300 built environment professionals has been made available to COGTA to help assess, scope, cost, design and implement critical reconstruction and building of damaged infrastructure.

Departmental resources will focus on the current 53 government owned buildings in KZN and the 12 government owned buildings in Eastern Cape which have been damaged by the floods to make them usable.

The Department has also identified 258 land parcels while the KZN Department of Public Works and Human Settlements have identified a further 25 land parcels.

These land parcels are being assessed for suitability for the resettlement of displaced communities by the Housing Development Agency (HDA).

Rural bridges: to date 52 sites in KZN in need of bridges have been identified.

The construction of the first 18 bridges in KZN is to commence from 01 June 2022.

In the Eastern Cape, technical assessments have been done at 20 bridge sites.

DPWI has re-assigned more capacity to assist the KZN and Eastern Cape Departments of Transport and affected municipalities.

In terms of the SONA Commitments on the Welisizwe Rural Bridges programme, 96 bridges are planned for the 2022/23 financial year.

These will be done in 6 provinces; the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, North West, the Free State and KwaZulu Natal.

Earlier this month, together with the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans and the KZN Department of Public Works, we handed over the latest three completed bridges in KwaZulu Natal.

Infrastructure Investment Plan

Recent events have again laid bare the importance of infrastructure and ensuring that we not only build new infrastructure but maintain existing infrastructure.

We must build and maintain infrastructure taking the severe impacts of climate change into consideration.

The Infrastructure Investment Plan is central to the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP) aimed at creating jobs and has started bringing the construction industry back to life.

Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) was established following approval from Cabinet in 2020 has been hard at work to drive the Infrastructure Investment Plan through project unblocking, unlocking funding to ensure and monitoring and reporting on the implementation priority projects.

South Africa's NDP sets out clear economic development targets, which is further supported by the Infrastructure Investment Plan as well as the National Infrastructure Plan 2050.

Strategic Integrated Projects (SIPS) Progress

In 2020 we gazetted 62 projects as SIPS. These projects are in the Transport Sector, Human Settlements and Energy Sector, Digital and Agriculture sectors.

I will give a quick update on the SIPs and the rest is available on request.

The Transport Sector gazetted projects are well under way with construction completed on 5 projects, 5 projects in construction and 4 projects in Procurement.

The Social Housing Sector is making significant progress with 3 projects completed, 2 projects in construction, 2 projects are in procurement while the rest are in the planning stages.

Small Harbours Development

The R501 million repair and maintenance programme to the 13 Proclaimed Fishing Harbours in the Western Cape included removal of sunken vessels, repairs to slipways, shore...