Arrive Alive 'needs a rethink'

2003-06-09 19:50

Cape Town - The Arrive Alive campaign has failed to reach its targets of reducing road fatalities by 5% a year, and it is clear the programme needs to go back to the drawing board, says Democratic Alliance transport spokesperson Stuart Farrow.

"Its funding and focus is obviously missing its mark," he said during debate on the transport budget in the National Assembly on Monday.

"To add fuel to the fire, the recently-released study by the Medical Research Council (MRC) has shown that South Africa's road death toll is more than double what the department of transport says.

"According to the report, gathered from provincial mortuaries, 18 443 road accident fatalities were recorded during 2000, compared to the 7 635 from the department's statistics," he said.

If these figures were anything to go by, this had to put South Africa as the number one road death country in the world, and could cost the economy a massive R33.3bn a year.

The MRC put the reason for the substantial difference in road death figures down to fact that the Arrive Alive accident reports were based only on deaths that occurred at accident scenes, and did not necessarily include deaths that occurred on the way to hospital or at some later point.

"If this is the case, then the department needs to seriously review its methods of accurately determining systems of statistic gathering," Farrow said.

Turning to the railway network, he said it was "a well-known fact that our railways, like our roads, are deteriorating due to lack of maintenance and upgrading".

A capital injection of over R120bn was needed to improve the ageing rolling stock, signal systems, and tracks.

Although it was commendable that the budget provided some funding for this purpose, it was not adequate.

"Our railways still continue to be inefficient and unable to compete with road transportation.

"This is having a devastating effect on our country's import and export competitiveness, and the economy as a whole," Farrow said.

- SAPA