Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 01-11-2019
With confusion and impatience lingering around the future of e-tolls, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) says e-tolls is a political issue that must be resolved.
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni on Thursday stated that government has decided to retain the user-pay principle and that motorists must pay for e-tolls to fix the state of the road network.
The African National Congress (ANC) in Gauteng in contrast to national government is not in favour of e-tolls, as is the party’s tripartite alliance partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).
Outa’s Wayne Duvenhage says the situation surrounding e-tolls is very confusing.
“This has been dragging on for a long time now. It’s a political issue, because every time there is an election, they say they are going to find a solution and then after the election they go back to trying to force this matter.”
Duvenhage says while Mboweni believes the user-pay principle will continue to apply, he’s forgetting that motorists are not paying for e-tolls.
“So we say to him, what are you going to do about it, because for the last six years you’ve thrown everything at the public. You’ve threatened them with criminal records, with losing their vehicle licences, you have started summonsing them for the last couple of years, you even dangled carrots of discounts that never worked.”
Duvenhage says Outa believes that Sanral should renegotiate the terms of the e-tolls bond with the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) to make them more economically viable.
Listen to the interview with Wayne Duvenhage
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