The Tshwane mayor has slammed President Cyril Ramaphosa for saying more stringent measures were needed to deal with the non-payment of e-tolls.
Solly Msimanga said in a statement released on Wednesday afternoon he was not hopeful that Ramaphosa’s announcement would ease the excessive burden imposed on commuters and that the president should rather have announced the scrapping of e-tolls and alternative funding for Gauteng roads.
“Only 30% of road users in Gauteng pay their e-tolls and motorists reportedly owe Sanral R11-billion.
“Gauteng’s e-tolls will struggle to fetch R900-million this year, which is substantively lower than the R3-billion required per annum to achieve their intended targets.”
ALSO READ: UPDATE: Scrapping e-tolls could be ‘devastating’
Msimanga said during the past two years, only R10.231-million was collected through legal processes, costing more than R4-million in legal fees.
“Sanral has very high, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure as a result of not following supply chain management processes.
“Add [to this] that, for the financial year 2016/17, Sanral’s irregular expenditure rose to R10-billion, and fruitless expenditure is R15-million.
“These are huge amounts – taxpayers’ money should not be wasted in such a manner.”
According to Sanral’s annual report to Parliament, 15 505 summonses have been issued between 2016 and August.
ALSO READ: UPDATE: E-toll business as usual – Sanral
Of these, only 3 724 were served on defaulters, meaning that only 24% of summonses issued reached the defaulters.
There are still about 2.2 million summonses to be issued and served.
“E-tolls are an excessive and unnecessary burden on Gauteng residents, who are struggling to survive due to inflation and the rise in petrol prices.”
Msimanga said the fact that Sanral was now issuing summonses for the non-payment of e-tolls to overburdened companies and motorists had a major negative impact on these businesses which were only trying to survive the recession.
ALSO READ: UPDATE: E-tolls could be down this time next year – Outa
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