The Department of Defence would need about R8 billion to clear the maintenance backlogs at its nearly 40 000 buildings across the country.
Defence and Military Veterans Minister Thandi Modise said her department conducted a building condition assessment of the military bases and facilities used by the department with the assistance of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.
Modise said the Department of Defence was occupying 36 890 buildings across the country.
The condition and maintenance requirements of the buildings are as follows:
* A total of 9591 of the buildings require total replacement or rehabilitation.
* A further 5165 needed rehabilitation and corrective maintenance.
* At least 19921 buildings require condition-based maintenance.
* A total of 2213 buildings require preventative maintenance.
“The total cost required to clear the maintenance backlog is approximately R8 billion,” Modise said.
She was responding to parliamentary questions from DA MP Kobus Marais, who enquired about the state of military bases across the country, the breakdown of the infrastructure backlog that needs to be addressed at each base and the total cost to clear this backlog.
Marais said the South African taxpayer should get ready to spend nearly R2.5 billion a year on an SANDF foreign deployment to the eastern DRC while the local military bases were in such a dilapidated state that their extensive network of buildings required rehabilitation or extensive maintenance to the tune of R8 billion.
He said the dire state of infrastructure maintenance by the SANDF had already started to negatively affect military operations and place the defence force’s state of readiness at significant risk.
“Early this year, the Loftus building in Pretoria, which houses the headquarters of the South African Air Force, had to be evacuated after the Department of Employment and Labour observed that it did not have safe and healthy working conditions due to malfunctioning ventilation systems.”
He said with the SANDF failing to maintain or replace its prime mission equipment, it was obvious that there was simply no money available to clear the infrastructure and maintenance backlog.
“Military base facilities are the primary support facilities for the country’s state of readiness in case of a national emergency, and the fact that they have been allowed to deteriorate to the point of collapse is a national scandal,” Marais said.
He said his party was reiterating its call that the department be placed under administration.
“The Department of Defence has become a wasteland of inefficiency, terminal decline and indifference to the welfare of our men and women in uniform.”
Cape Times