POLOKWANE – The Roads Agency Limpopo (Ral) has had a new chief executive officer at the helm since the beginning of March.
Maselaganye Petrus Matji is a man who is determined to make a difference: Ral falls under the department of public works, roads and infrastructure and was established to manage, plan, design, upgrade, maintain, own and control the usage of roads and their reserves, which covers more than 20 000km in the province.
Some 7 005km of these roads are tarred or surfaced and around 15 143km are gravel roads. Limpopo has 717 bridges.
Matji holds, among other qualifications, a civil engineering master’s degree from the University of Stellenbosch and a master of business leadership degree from Unisa.
He is a registered professional construction project manager with the South African Council for Project and Construction Management Professions and a hydrologist registered with the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions.
With 23 years of experience covering the fields of infrastructure, engineering, optimisation and finance, water conservation, demand management as well as strategy and policy development, he has a wealth of experience.
He previously worked for the department of water affairs, worked for 12 years in the private sector as a hydraulic engineer, at national treasury in public finance dealing with municipal infrastructure grants and the Division of Revenue Act and also worked in the communication section of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). He was also an area manager for hydraulic infrastructure engineering at the CSIR’s built environment section before he left.
His favourite area or work is with water, which he says has to be taken into account in all divisions of work in the engineering and development fields.
Matji says he hopes to add value to South Africa, to Limpopo and to communities to build good quality and sustainable infrastructure in order to boost economic development in the province.
Matji’s plans for his first 100 days in office at Ral:
• Meet his staff members.
• Share his vision, focus areas and priorities.
• Identify measurable outputs and quick wins.
• Align organisational strategy with provincial government priorities.
• Work on the strategy to reposition the organisation as one of the most successful roads infrastructure delivery models in the country.
• Ensure organisational stability and provide decisive leadership.
• Identify private sector players (such as mines and industries) who can be partners in roads infrastructure delivery.
“Our programmes will be structured around the premier’s State of the Province Address. The key growth areas have been identified. The challenge is to build sustainable infrastructure of good quality, structured to support development in the identified areas.
“Ral will be one of the key drivers of job creation in the province. But in order to achieve these goals we need assets; we need to first build the skills and use those skills that are here already. We have to ensure the development of people and use our projects to develop skills, especially in the engineering field,” he explains.
Matji says different roles and categories of skilled people are needed, which includes artisans, technicians, academic thinkers and engineers. Internships will play a big roll in the “new” Ral, he says.
“My aim is to make Ral a model of service delivery in the province.”
Ral board chairperson, Matome Ralebipi, expressed his delight at the appointment.
