Johannesburg - The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) wants R300m from National Treasury to continue operations.

The department of transport, which has recently completed an investigation into mismanagement and misappropriation at the RTMC, said this money is essential to update the RTMC' skills and systems.

The result of the investigation, which was initiated earlier this year, was announced this week in Pretoria by Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele.

The investigation had found that the RTMC management had, since the organisation was established, unlawfully disbursed R144m. CEO Ranthoko Rakgoale, and three other RTMC employees had already been discharged.

Riah Phiyega, the chairperson of the investigating team said two of the biggest abuses exposed were an accident-reporting system unlawfully purchased for R65m and an illegal 10-year rental agreement worth R658m.

This agreement had since been cancelled and the eventual loss to the RTMC was R11m. The RTMC had also illegally used R300m of the eNaTIS system's operating funds to cover its own expenses instead of paying the money over to the department of transport.

The RTMC had been established by the department to coordinate strategic planning of road traffic issues at national, provincial and local government level.
These included strategies to improve public road safety.

Ndebele said that it was precisely for this reason that the organisation again needed assistance. Every day 38 people die on South Africa’s roads. If correctly managed, the RTMC would be able to find ways to check the daily tragedy, he maintained.

Another of the RTMC's tasks is to apply the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) Act.

This contentious traffic legislation, which has for some time been applied in Johannesburg and Pretoria, would've been implemented countrywide on November 1, but has now been deferred to April 1 2011.

Collins Letsoalo, the RTMC's acting chief executive, said that further action would now be taken against the people identified in the investigation, and that it was important to note that the R144m had not necessarily been stolen, but simply misspent.
 
Letsoalo added that, apart from Treasury, the RTMC was also considering approaching the private sector to enter into possible partnerships for some of the functions the organisation wanted to carry out in future.

 - Sake24.com