Santaco denies it will boycott e-tolls

Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (OUTA) stands by its statement which announced that South African National Taxi Council (Santaco), will boycott the e-toll system.

Santaco president, Phillip Taaibosch was quoted by OUTA, saying “as long as taxi operators are billed, no single taxi operator will pay e-tolls”.

In response to OUTA’ s statement, Santaco said the taxis had no reason to boycott e-tolls because public transport vehicles were exempt from these fees. “Santaco wishes to distance itself from any statements purported to have been made by the organisation calling for a boycott on e-tolls, such statements as reported in the media are both factually incorrect, malicious and misleading,” said Santaco’s statement.

Spokesperson for OUTA, John Clarke responded, “In all instances the SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) has fallen far short of a human-rights based commitment to ensuring prior, free and informed consent. I believe that the ambivalence within Santaco shows how Sanral, in fact practices divide and rule tactics, rather than broad based consensus building.”

According to Clarke, their research results indicated that e-tolling in this relatively high non-compliant environment, combined with the appalling manner in which the Sanral have gone about their plan, makes a mockery of the user pays principle. “Our projections reveal that more users will remain untagged than tagged and that is a formula for disaster for e-tolls. Clearly evident is their frustration to receive their e-tags to grant them the promised free passage on the highways. This is just another of many examples pointing to the numerous administration conditions of e-tolling, which adds this irrational plan is unworkable,” argued Clarke. E-tolling was implemented on Gauteng highways on December last year, despite several court challenges to halt the project.

Details: Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance spokesperson, John Clarke 083 608 0944; Santaco president 0833761749.