Sanral’s half a billion e-toll debt
JOBURG - Sanral has racked up an amount of more than half a billion rand in overdue e-toll fees.
The Ministry of Transport confirmed that motorists owe the roads agency more than half a billion rand in tariffs for the period between December and March.
Responding to Parliamentary questions, Transport Minister Dipuo Peters said an invoiced amount of
R543 544 574 had been transferred to the road agency’s Violations Processing Centre for debt collection.
Of this amount, which excludes VAT, only 9.1 percent of transactions had been recovered, equating to R50 043 487.
With VAT included, the total amount owed by Gauteng motorists is nearly R620 million.
Motorists who had yet to pay their outstanding bills were been given another 30 days to settle their accounts or face jail time.
Additionally, a question by the DA revealed that it cost the transport department over R50 million to collect the e-toll debt.
“The reply states that R54 735 638 has been spent collecting debt as of 1 March, 2014. This includes R32 782 580 for postage and printing of invoices and the cost of the actual collection process which is R21 953 058,” DA shadow transport minister Ian Ollis said.
“The minister’s reply reveals clearly that South Africans do not want e-tolls and they are not paying for them. It also reveals the costs of the administrative nightmare that has been debt-collecting over the past couple of months.”
Meanwhile, Metro police confirmed that unpaid e-toll bills cannot lead to the withholding of vehicle license registrations.
Speaking on Talk Radio 702 earlier this week, Director of Licensing and Prosecutions of the Metro police, Gerrie Gerneke, explained that “there’s no legislation which prohibits motorists from renewing their vehicle licenses if they have outstanding e-toll bills”.
