The Minister of Transport needs to explain why his department spent an estimated R1.2-million placing self-congratulatory advertorial inserts in several national newspapers last week - supplements that featured no fewer than 27 full colour photographs of the Minister himself.

Copies of the 24 page "SA on the Move" supplement appeared in at least four national newspaper titles last week - The Mercury, The Star, Pretoria News and the Daily News - and in addition to the 27 photographs of the minister, also contained:

• An entire page dedicated to a biography of the Minister of Transport
• An entire page dedicated to a biography of the Director-General of the Department of Transport
• Two pages dedicated to the Minister's 2010/11 budget vote speech
• An entire page dedicated to the various staff members of the Kwazulu-Natal provincial government

On enquiry with the publications concerned, it was revealed that the costs of placing the inserts based on the number of copies published on the days on which the inserts appeared, would have amounted to approximately the following:

• The Mercury: R31 680 to place inserts in 44 000 newspapers and R147 836 to print 44 000 copies
• The Star: R122 400 to place in 170 000 newspapers and R568 803 to print 170 000 copies
• Pretoria News: R21 600 to place 30 000 inserts and R100 377 to print 30 000 copies
• Daily News: R33 120 to place 46 500 inserts and R153 911 to print 46 500 copies

The Minister's department is currently facing massive road maintenance backlogs of R75-billion. It is therefore unclear why the department would see it fit congratulating itself, with money that could have, itself, been spent on sorting out the problem. It famously would have cost just R500 to have fixed the pothole that caused a tragic deadly accident on a tarred road near to Minister Ndebele's residence in Albert Falls. What this administration continues to fail to recognise is the opportunity cost involved in every item of fruitless and wasteful expenditure. That R1.2-million could have been used to repair 2400 like-sized potholes. Yet the Minister appears more interested in seeing 27 photos of himself in a newspaper than actually sorting out the country's infrastructure problems.

We will add this amount to our wasteful expenditure monitor, which has so far tracked more than R1.1-billion in wasteful and fruitless expenditure, since we launched it in July last year.

We believe the figure quoted of R1.2-million is a very conservative estimate of the costs involved - it does not include any of the costs associated with compiling the information in the advertorial, for instance. The Democratic Alliance (DA) will be issuing further parliamentary questions on this matter.