Police officers at roadblocks set up by the Gauteng Department of Community Safety (GDCS) and using South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) trucks were pulling over road users today and questioning them about their e-tag registration, according to the Justice Project South Africa (JPSA).
HumanIPO reported last month SANRAL had denied claims it was working with the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) to stop and check road users for e-tag registrations.
However, the JPSA has said the GDCS was pulling over road users and asking them why they were driving on e-toll roads without an e-tag.
The policemen then allegedly recorded the driver’s name and identification number.
The organisation said there is no law requiring road users to have an e-tag.
“Unfortunately, the presence of SANRAL’s heavily branded orange e-tolls trucks at all of these exercises has created what can only be described as a “mass panic” amongst motorists, many of whom have assumed that they are there to enforce outstanding e-tolls,” the JPSA said.
A senior official at the GDCS has assured road users the exercise was merely to check for faulty or missing number plates.
The JPSA said SANRAL has repeatedly been involved in “propaganda and intimidation exercises” to force motorists to register, and it would be “naive at best to think that they would not take full advantage of the psychological effect it can have on motorists by having these trucks accompany legitimate law enforcement exercises”.
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