The current minister Fikile Mbalula was elected as the ANC secretary-general in Mangaung last month and is expected to be stationed at Luthuli House full time when Ramaphosa reshuffles his Cabinet.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, AA spokesperson Layton Beard said the next transport minister had a huge job awaiting him or her.
“It covers many areas within the government that need a lot of attention. Among those areas, obviously from our perspective, is mobility for citizens and at the moment I think we are severely lacking in that department.
“We are very concerned about safety on our roads and the condition they are currently in, as well as the safety of vehicles. Most importantly, I think we are very concerned about drivers’ behaviour which at the moment appears to be very poor; it has been for many years.
“Unfortunately, there has not been any improvement at the moment in our statistics in terms of road fatalities over the last 10 years. Since the current minister took over, it hasn’t improved and in 2019 to 2021 the situation was worse,” Beard said.
He added that road infrastructure had been suffering in such a way since resources had been diverted into private companies. That was something the country didn’t need.
“The state of our roads is extremely concerning and we need more traffic law enforcers on our roads. It is not AA that is making that point; this comes comes from a ministerial task team that was appointed by the previous minister of transport.
“They found that we needed double the amount of traffic law enforcers than what we currently have. In our view, we probably need more than double, but it is a good start.
“Their interventions that happen during the festive season are great, but you’re not going to change people’s attitudes over two weeks. We need more constant education and campaigns,” he said.
Beard added that they needed someone to deal with corruption effectively on the roads, as well as the infrastructure that was currently in bad state.
IOL