The South African parliament’s transport portfolio committee should see beyond what it is told by the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) in a briefing today, according to the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (OUTA).
HumanIPO reported yesterday (Monday) SANRAL would today (Tuesday) brief the committee on the progress of e-tolling in Gauteng, with spokesperson Vusi Mona saying it would give the state-owned company the chance to highlight both the successes and failure of the controversial e-tolling project.
“We look forward to the opportunity to explain what went wrong with e-tolling, but also what went right,” Mona said.
OUTA, however, urged the committee to not take everything SANRAL tells it at face value.
“SANRAL speaks like a soccer coach whose team has lost 2-0 with an own goal having been scored and finds something positive in the fact that each team scored a goal,” OUTA spokesperson John Clarke said in a statement.
“Even more comical is SANRAL’s claim that the number of complaints are a mere 0.3 per cent of the total road users.”
HumanIPO reported last week OUTA had again questioned SANRAL’s figures for e-toll compliance, and Clarke said e-tolling needed compliance levels of close to 90 per cent to be regarded as a success by international standards.
“OUTA urges MPs to insist that SANRAL fully explain why nine weeks after a potentially serious breach of the road agency’s online systems SANRAL has not yet established how many user accounts were compromised and why it has neither notified compromised account holders of the crime, nor notified its user-base as a whole that their personal data may be in the hands of cyber criminals,” said Clarke.
Earlier this month SANRAL said it was giving its full attention to resolving billing issues after President Jacob Zuma raised concerns.
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