‘Exempting buses and taxis won’t exempt the poor consumer’

The decision by government to exclude buses and taxis from paying tolls for the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) will not necessarily benefit the poor as the tariffs for trucks will no doubt be passed on to those very same consumers. According to Road Freight Association (RFA) spokesman Gavin Kelly, the decision that only some road users pay tolls is unfair. As truckers will be forced to pay they will, in an attempt to stay in business, try to pass these extra costs onto customers and ultimately the consumer. “If you are implementing a user pay system then every user of that road should be expected to pay, including the people travelling in buses and taxis. The system is just unfair,” he told FTW. “Having said that though the people in society who can ill afford to pay more for their basic commodities are going to be affected the most through the tolling of trucks delivering goods.” Economist Mike Schussler, who along with other leading economists says the tolling will compound poverty and low wages in the country, confirms this. “The highest price increases will be on the cheapest food items such as bread,” he said. If a loaf of bread costs R6 before tolling, Schussler is estimating that after toll tariffs the same bread will cost in the region of R10. This will be because products and goods will now be tolled more than four times in some cases, said Kelly. “A product will enter the toll area in Gauteng from the port in Durban for instance and then be taken to a distribution centre before being taken to the store meaning the same product will be tolled twice – but that could even double in some cases. Those costs are going to result in goods prices increasing.” Trade union Cosatu last week said that should the tolling go ahead at the newly announced government tariffs they would strike, as South African consumers could not carry the extra burden. These cost pressures, they say, will be the most severely felt by the poor. Kelly said the RFA had advised both the minister of finance and transport of the devastating effects of tolling truckers, but it all seems to have gone unnoticed. “The new tolls will force trucks onto the already fastcollapsing road network, and with trucks being the major revenue generator in the GFIP model, this will cause havoc with the assumptions in this model.”