JOHANNESBURG SOUTH – The Democratic Alliance will write to the Minister of Transport Dipou Peters to urge the minister to schedule an urgent meeting with the DA, to table a plan to resolve the impasse between Minister Peters and Gauteng Premier David Makhura.
The DA has long championed the fight against e-tolls, mandated by South Africa’s outrage against the scheme, by challenging e-tolls both in the courts and in Parliament.
Now that the ANC in Gauteng has joined the growing opposition to e-tolls, led by the DA; the minister can no longer ignore the voices against the e-toll scheme she so avidly defends. Minister Peters is now the last bastion in defence of this unjust scheme.
After the ANC in Gauteng, through its chairman Paul Mashatile, unequivocally committed to scrapping e-tolls in its current form in favour of a fuel levy administered through the South African Revenue Service, Minister Peters is now under pressure to act.
The DA’s position has always been to scrap e-tolls, and in support of a ring-fenced fuel levy as a far less invasive means to pay for road infrastructure.
A fuel levy has almost no administrative costs, as opposed to E-tolls which cost a reported staggering R670 million per year to administer.
Manny de Freitas, MP and DA Shadow Minister of Transport, said the Minister must now commit to meeting with the DA to map a resolution to this impasse, delivering the findings of the Gauteng Advisory Panel to the Minister of Finance and National Treasury for action; everything necessary to scrap e-tolls once and for all.
“The ANC from the province right up to the President allowed e-tolling in Gauteng to start with, now that the Gauteng ANC is making promises to ‘stick with the people of Gauteng’, we must urgently end the impasse between them and the Minister to scrap e-tolls once and for all,” he added.
