The October month has been marked as the Transport Month. This period is used to focus on transport related matters such as road carnages and progress achieved in various transport programmes and projects among others. One of the campaigns to create awareness and reduce road carnage has been the placing of 47 coffins on the N14 highway from March 2015. The number of coffins represents the daily loss of lives on the country’s roads. This has been performed in an attempt to change behavior on the roads and to discourage road carnage. The campaign was initiated by Lead SA (an organization that challenges ordinary South Africans to do the right thing on a daily basis and to counter the negative perceptions about the country), with the support of the National Department of Transport, Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), Road Accident Fund (RAF), Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport (GDRT), Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) and civil society groups. During this month government also encourages citizens to use public transport to commute in order to ease congestion and contribute to reducing emission.

Our educational article for this month’s issue of Mbalo Brief focuses on the Poverty trends in South Africa: An examination of absolute poverty between 2006 and 2011. The article is based on the findings contained in
Report No. 03-10-06 of 2014. The article will focus among others, the levels of poverty between males and females, poverty in relation to education level, population group, age and individual poverty.

This issue also features articles on Land transport, Mining, Food and beverages and Tourism and Migration, amongst others. Fill in our crossword puzzle to test your insight into general issues. We have also included the solutions to the September 2015 puzzle.

Articles published in this issue are based on results of industry surveys conducted for the months ranging from June to August 2015, which were released in September 2015.

Download Mbalo Brief – October 2015

For full details on any of our surveys, visit our website at www.statssa.gov.za
Enjoy the read!