New e-toll dispensation does nothing for truckers - RFA

The newly announced dispensation for e-tolls is likely to have little or no positive impact on trucks using Gauteng’s toll roads, according to industry sources. Claims that the revised tariffs and new monthly caps announced by deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa last week would see payments nearly halved have been given short shrift by the freight industry and several other organisations. While the country’s biggest union, Cosatu, said the concessions were meaningless and were aimed at misleading the public, Wayne Duvenhage, chairman of the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa), described the announcement as a major disappointment. “Government has not lowered the tariffs. They have merely removed the punitive tariff, which no-one was paying anyway, and if the public had paid in the past, they would have purchased an e-tag for the same rate of 30c per kilometre. The reduced cap from R450 to R225 per month only appeals to less than 10% of the motorists as over 90% of users would not have exceeded that cap in the past anyway,” he said. Gavin Kelly, spokesman for the Road Freight Association, said these caps also only applied to light motor vehicles. “There is no change in tolls for trucks,” he told FTW. “The fees have not been halved. They have simply taken some of the monthly caps applicable to some of the categories and changed those. Most trucks operating on these freeways will have to continue to pay the tolls they have been paying since they were first introduced.” He said the announcement that the public sector would be exempt was nothing new either as that had always been the case. “What they have done, however, is to give a 60% discount on all outstanding fees. So those people who have not been law abiding and have run up bills will be rewarded with a massive reduction. What about those people who have been paying their tolls every month? They are not going to get a discount of 60%.” Ramaphosa said users who had e-toll fees outstanding would have six months to settle their debts – dating back to December 2013 – at a discounted tariff of 60%. This, he said, would not disadvantage users who had been paying toll fees all along but he did not explain this statement. “Why be law abiding in the future when government will in all probability discount what you owe?” said Kelly. Duvenhage said he believed this discount was nothing but a carrot. And Kelly believes there is still no guarantee going forward that people will pay. Commenting on the linking of the tolling system to licence renewals, Kelly said he believed government was playing for time while it worked out a new system to address the issues around tags for which people were simply not registering. And Duvenhage believes government is overlooking many other unintended consequences that will likely arise out of this decision – including a proliferation of new illegal licence discs and number plate scams. South African National Roads Agency Ltd (Sanral) CEO Nazir Alli said in a statement he hoped the matter around the funding of the Gauteng e-toll system would now be laid to rest as the user-pay system ensured equity and efficiency in the allocation of resources. Duvenhage, however, said all the reductions in tariffs had done was push up the costs of collections as a percentage of revenue generated to an unacceptable level. Peter Hugo, chairman of the Cape Chamber of Commerce transport portfolio committee, said the userpays issue was far from being addressed through these concessions and was a problem not only in Gauteng but across the country.