The Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (OUTA) has said the level of debt in South Africa makes e-tolling an impractical solution to paying for new roads.
OUTA chairman Wayne Duvenage echoed concerns raised by the National Credit Regulator (NCR), said many South Africans would not be able to afford the tolls.
”In the past three months, almost 200,000 additional citizens have been classified as having impaired credit records, bringing the total number to 9.53 million,” Duvenage said. “Thousands of road users in Gauteng will not be able to find another few hundred rands after tax, to pay e-tolls.”
Recent findings released by the NCR show almost half of all credit-active South Africans are in some kind of financial difficulty.
“SANRAL is ignoring the reality that not only are the overwhelming majority of South Africans opposed to e-tolling for various valid reasons, many living in Gauteng will simply not be able to afford it and will simply not pay,” Duvenage said.
He called on the government and the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) to acknowledge the opposition to e-tolling and find new ways of funding new roads.
“Gauteng’s freeways are South Africa’s freeways and SANRAL should cease with its weak ‘User Pays’ argument to introduce an extremely costly and inefficient means of funding the freeway upgrade, which handsomely enriches foreign companies,” he said.
HumanIPO reported last week OUTA was “shocked” Austrian e-tolling company Kapsch TrafficCom expects a ZAR672 million (US$67.6 million) revenue boost from Gauteng’s e-tolling system.
OUTA) has raked in ZAR2.35 million (US$228,000) in donations following its call to the public to help them raise funding for their pending case against e-tolling at the Supreme Court of Appeal in September.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has contributed ZAR1 million (US$101,000) towards the cause.
