Pretoria - The new board of the Roads Agency Limpopo (RAL) will be appointed before the end of this month, Premier Stanley Mathabatha says.
“In an endeavour to resuscitate the agencies, the Road Agency Limpopo (RAL) and the Gateway Airport Authority Limited (GAAL) have commissioned a study to review the institutional models of the two agencies.
“We have appointed a new board for GAAL and during the course of this month, a new board for RAL shall be appointed,” the premier announced, during his State of the Province Address, on Thursday.
Premier Mathabatha said over the past five years, the focus of the provincial government was on the rehabilitation and maintenance of aging road infrastructure, especially roads that connect the major economic towns of the province.
He said the province had inherited a total road network of approximately 21 000km from the previous administrations.
Of this, only 5 715km was tarred. However, now the total tarred road network of the province is 7 315km.
Employment up, tourism stats improve
The latest Labour Force Survey of StatsSA shows that the official unemployment rate in Limpopo is at 16.9%, representing a 2.2% decrease compared to 19.1% in the corresponding period in 2012.
This is the lowest unemployment rate in the country. The 2.2% decrease in unemployment is attributed to government’s roll-out of massive infrastructure projects across the province such as the building of Medupi power station in Lephalale.
Through the Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP) programme, Premier Mathabatha said they have created 591 494 job opportunities.
“In this regard, I am pleased to mention that of these opportunities created, 49% went to youth and 60% to women. We have exceeded the national demographic target of 40% and 55% respectively.
“We are looking forward to the commencement of phase 3 of the EPWP with great anticipation. The challenges and lessons learnt in the implementation of the first two phases of the program will provide us with necessary guidance to do things much better this time around,” he said.
Switching focus to tourism, the premier said the province had shown an increase of 35% in international tourism since 2004 and a steady growth in domestic tourism in the previous year.
Limpopo also recorded the highest growth in 2011 with 3.3 million tourist arrivals.
Since 2004, the private sector and government have invested R1.6 billion in tourism infrastructure. To date, this investment has resulted in no less than 23 000 sustainable jobs created in the sector. - SAnews.gov.za
