Transport Minister S'busiso Ndebele on Friday launched a R22,3-billion roads upgrade and maintenance initiative to fix and upgrade the entire secondary roads network of South Africa, creating opportunities for emerging contractors across the country.

The roads infrastructure upgrade and maintenance programme, dubbed S'hamba Sonke - Moving Together, aims to create 400 000 jobs by 2014, with 70 000 of these jobs expected to be created during 2011 through labour intensive methods of construction and maintenance.

"In partnership with all provinces, we are going to improve access to schools, clinics and other social and economic opportunities by drastically upgrading our secondary roads network and fixing and repairing potholes throughout the country,” Ndebele noted.

The Department of Transport (DoT) had set aside R6,4-billion in 2011/12, R7,5-billion in 2012/13 and R8,2-billion for 2013/14, amounting to R22,3-billion in the medium term.

The national roll-out of the Zibambele initiative, entailing routine road maintenance by a family or household contracted by a provincial department to maintain a specific length of road by using labour intensive methods on a part time basis, would form part of the S'hamba Sonke programme.

The DoT reported that South Africa has historically invested mainly in the construction of roads, without striking the balance between maintenance and construction.

“Through programmes, such as S'hamba Sonke, South Africa will be able to match the global 60/40 construction and maintenance benchmark.”

The programme included a significant pothole patching drive, which would be rolled out nationally from April. A national pothole hotline would also be launched for road users to report potholes in any area around the country.

Ndebele noted that this would assist the programme to arrest the decline of infrastructure while creating thousands of much-needed jobs.

Roads engineers and superintendents would be deployed across the entire roads network with the responsibility to tackle potholes and infrastructure maintenance by driving through stretches of road every morning to determine the daily condition of the roads network, thereby assisting with the early identification and repair of potholes.