Cosatu reacts to expansion of e-tolling to KZN
JOBURG - Earlier this year, a whistleblower who worked for Kapsch – the Austrian company that worked with the roads agency to toll Gauteng’s freeways – alleged that the roads agency planned to implement similar tolls in Durban and Cape Town.
The extension of the contentious e-tolling system to KwaZulu-Natal has been met with calls for the South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) to be disbanded.
Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) in Gauteng said it was concerned about the move to expand e-tolling which proved that the roads agency planned to roll out the system in the entire country.
“The recent announcement that the system will be introduced on the N3 and also the N2 re-affirms Sanral’s commitment to expand the system across the country,” said the trade union’s Gauteng secretary, Dumisani Dakile.
Dakile said the struggle to eradicate e-tolling was not over and efforts to fight the “commodification of public roads” would be redoubled.
At the trade union’s next central executive committee meeting it planned to call for the adoption of a campaign to disband the roads agency, he said.
Earlier this year, a whistleblower who worked for Kapsch – the Austrian company that worked with the roads agency to toll Gauteng’s freeways – alleged that the roads agency planned to implement similar tolls in Durban and Cape Town.
The whistleblower further claimed that Gauteng motorists would be saddled with an additional cost of between R200 million and R300 million because the roads agency’s e-toll control centre in Midrand was designed to handle the monitoring of all South Africa’s national roads.
The roads agency denied the claims.
However, on 21 May the roads agency announced that KwaZulu-Natal was set to have e-tolls by November.
According to the roads agency, the e-toll system, which would be implemented at the existing Mariannhill Toll Plaza on the N3 and at the Oribi Toll Plaza near Port Shepstone on the N2, would not be an additional toll, but an alternative means of collecting existing tolls. The current method of paying tolls at booths at Mariannhill and Oribi would remain, but designated lanes would be added for vehicles with e-tags to be charged without having to stop.
Meanwhile, the trade union launched a scathing attack against the roads agency saying, “We are of the view that Sanral has became a liability to the implementation of the radical phase of the National Democratic Revolution… Sanral is hell-bent on destroying the movement with its introduction and implementation of the neo-liberal tendency in our country.
“We cannot afford to donate the revolution to the right-wing forces as a result of the state agencies which are driven by profit motive and continue to act against the interests of the working class and the poor in the country.”
