Department of Transport (DoT) spokesperson Collen Msibi has revealed that the government entity is slowly but surely winning in the fight against local business forums, or as they’re more commonly referred to nowadays, “construction mafias.”
These mafia-style groups have plagued the country’s infrastructure upgrades in recent years, demanding substantial portions of project budgets in return for protection from themselves.
The problem has reached a point where four major road enhancements across the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga provinces were completely abandoned due to extortion attempts, and it has forced the City of Cape Town to lodge municipal employees in safehouses to keep them out of danger.
The South African Army was also brought in to protect the R20-billion N2 Wild Coast Road Project from these construction mafias.
“At this point, we seem to have won the battle”
While it seemed that the criminals had the upper hand in the situation, Msibi said the DoT has found a way to deal with construction mafias through active stakeholder engagements which have seen the ongoing N2 and N3 upgrades being largely unaffected by extortion attempts.
“When we started these projects there [was] an issue about the business forums who were fighting to be part of this particular project,” Msibi told Newzroom Afrika.
“So we’ve had to create structures where we’re able to engage with them and where we involve them, so at this point, we seem to have won the battle.”
He warns that not all the mafia groups are playing ball with the authorities. A recent incident on one of the National Roads Agency’s (Sanral) ongoing undertakings saw several individuals being arrested after attempting to interfere with the duties of the contractor.
The disruptions are minimal at this point, however, and the DoT expects it will be able to complete the N2 and N3 initiatives without much further delay. These projects are forecasted to wrap up in about eight years from today, said Msibi.
Outside of the flagship highway upgrades, the construction mafia problem remains prevalent in more remote regions of the country.
For instance, Msibi said that employees of Sanral are still harassed by community leaders on a regular basis when they attempt to fix potholes in and around small towns and villages as part of the Vala Zonke campaign.
Instead of fighting fire with fire, Msibi said that Sanral has taken it upon itself to consult with traditional leaders and upskill community members so that they can be involved in future projects via the Taking Sanral to the People campaign.
Sanral takes the utmost care to ensure that everyone it employs, be it full-time workers or contracted SMMEs, have the requisite skills to adequately perform the job, and it therefore can’t involve these untrained individuals even if it wanted to, said Msibi.
“There are structures which have been created by Sanral to engage with communities, and there’s in fact a project they call Taking Sanral to the People, so that we are able to explain and to train some of these business forums and the small companies,” he said.
Just on the N2 and N3 projects alone, Sanral estimates that around R6 billion will be paid to small businesses and residents from local communities who qualified to work under the ambit of Sanral.
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