The Justice Project South African (JPSA) has said the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) denial it has issued final demands and summonses for outstanding e-tolls payments is “worrying”, and that the roads agency is lying to the public.
HumanIPO reported this week the JPSA said a company had received two emails from SANRAL’s Violations Processing Centre (VPC), saying: “A Final Demand has been issued in regard to your e-toll Violations Processing Centre (VPC) Account” and “a summons has been issued”.
However, SANRAL spokesperson Vusi Monadenied the claims by the JPSA.
“SANRAL has not issued Final Demand invoices, however we have issued communication as final reminder of outstanding payment. We also have not requested any summons to be issued by the National Prosecuting Authority,” he said.
The JPSA said the denial is worrisome because, if it is true, “the SANRAL VPC is lying to people in its emails”.
“This constitutes both, unconscionable (unreasonably excessive) conduct and intimidation on the part of the VPC since they have made threats and statements of fact in their emails,” the JPSA said.
The non-profit said there is no denying the fact the emails were received.
It said the headers of the emails have been verified to have originated from bulkmail.tmtservices.co.za.
“JPSA would not have put out its release on Tuesday, May 6, 2014 if we had not verified the authenticity of the emails prior to doing so,” it said.
The company said it understands TMT Services are responsible for running the VPC and “it is not unusual for TMT to engage in intimidation tactics and stray from the truth in order to achieve their objectives”.
“There are laws prohibiting such tactics, but for some reason, TMT Services and others don’t seem to be of the opinion that laws apply to them,” it said.
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