Master Builders South Africa supports call for Construction Summit
The saddening and unsavoury scenes witnessed in the National Assembly during the State President’s delivery of the State Of The Nation Address (SONA) was perhaps indicative of the real ‘state of the nation’ and the political headwinds we are likely to face, expect and navigate through as a nation and as a sector in the coming year or two.
Bafikile Bonke Simelane
In keeping with last month’s theme of ‘courage and resilience in the face of adversity’ it was refreshing and reassuring to listen to the Finance Minister’s 2017/18 Budget Speech. “Fellow South Africans, if we make the right choices and do the right things we will achieve a just and fair society, founded on human dignity and equality. We will indeed transform our economy and country so that we all live in dignity, peace and well-being”.
Transformation dominated both the State President’s SONA and the Finance Minister’s speech to emphasise and underscore the imperative of this being a necessary precondition for the achievement of a just, fair and egalitarian society that the Finance Minister alluded to and to which all South Africans aspire. The Finance Minister went on to say “our growth challenge is intertwined with our transformation imperative. We need to transform in order to grow, we need to grow in order to transform”.
Master Builders South Africa is committed to play its part in mobilising its members to get fully behind the country’s transformation agenda without which there may be no country or nation to speak of.
It is for this reason that we support the call by Minister Ebrahim Patel for a Construction Summit to be held in the next three to four months; echoing our sentiments in last month’s edition for the need for a Construction Indaba similar to the Mining Indaba.
Whilst we are encouraged by the establishment and mobilisation of the Voluntary Rebuilding Programme (VRP), we are concerned by recent media statements which seem to indicate some discord among and between various interested and affected parties. Master Builders SA remains willing and available to be part of the solution towards the amicable resolution of any impasse in its commitment to accelerate the extent and pace of transformation.
We also wish to congratulate the Technical Review Committee (TRC) of the Construction Sector Charter Council (CSSC) for the selfless work they are doing in collating and sifting through all comments received so that the Draft Construction Sector Charter can be presented to Minister Rob Davies for signing and gazetting.
We remain optimistic that this can be achieved during the course of April so that it coincides with the coming into effect of the new Preferential Procurement Regulations on 1 April 2017.
Have a Blessed Human Rights Day! Let us pause, reflect with a collective conscience, and appropriately commemorate the ultimate sacrifice of those unarmed and defenceless people that lost their lives in Sharpeville and Langa on that fateful day in March 1960.
Bafikile Bonke Simelane