Sanral claim for e-tolls doomed

Call us gobsmacked: the SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) says efforts by its Violation Processing Centre to recover “historical debt” from e-tolls has a success rate of less than 1%.

Yet, it still insists that people who owed money for using the highways of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project before it was killed in March this year are still liable to pay up.

Good luck with trying to enforce that through issuing summonses.

You’ll need to send out millions and then, presumably, prove every single count in front of a court.

Yet, as it has shown from the beginning of this disastrous project – which only benefitted construction companies who grossly overcharged for work carried out – the numbers still don’t add up.

Sanral claims its expected credit losses will be R28.7 billion, largely from e-toll defaulters.

ALSO READ: Sanral reports nearly R29bn in expected credit losses from toll debtors

How can this be, when National Treasury has already agreed to fork out for some of that debt and the Gauteng government has been forced to cough up R12 billion for the same purpose?

Could it be that Sanral is lumping all of its losses together in one basket and then seeking to blame the rebel motorists of Gauteng?

Nothing about the murky mess of e-tolls surprises us.