It won’t happen, it will never happen. Not a single brick will be laid, we will oppose it, says Cosatu.
|||The South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) has been condemned for the proposed construction of more tolls, including one on the N3 between Pietermaritzburg and Durban.
On Sunday DA MP in the transport portfolio, Ian Ollis, revealed that more toll roads nationally had been proposed by Sanral.
“At a parliamentary portfolio committee of transport strategic planning session last week, the CEO of Sanral, Nazir Alli, revealed new toll roads that the entity is considering,” Ollis said.
“These new toll roads are in addition to the N1-N2 Winelands toll road in the Western Cape, the N2 Wild Coast toll road in the Eastern Cape and e-tolls in Gauteng,” he said.
Ollis said the proposed new toll roads were the N3 Durban to Pietermaritzburg; N12 Kimberley to Johannesburg; N1 Ring road at Musina; N1 Kroonstad to Winburg, and N1 Botlokwa Interchange.
Cosatu, the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government, the Upper South Coast Anti-Toll Alliance and economist Dawie Roodt, on Sunday criticised Sanral for contemplating more tolls.
Premier Zweli Mkhize’s spokesman, Ndabezinhle Sibiya, said more tolls would be bad for business in the province.
The provincial government said it would “seek clarity” on the proposed N3 tolling from national government and Sanral. Sibiya said the current tollgates were a burden to the public and business, and the provincial government feared any additional tolling could hamper economic growth.
“The provincial growth and development plan has pointed out that for this province to speed up socio-economic development, jobs must be created. We are of the view that any additional tolls will hamper business’s potential to create more jobs,” Sibiya said.
He said a task team had been formed by the provincial government to look into the issue of tolling in the province. The team comprises the MECs for Finance (Ina Cronje), Transport (Willies Mchunu) and Economic Development (Mike Mabuyakhulu).
“The team was formed to ensure we speak with one voice against any (additional) form of tolling,” Sibiya said.
Sanral spokesman, Vusi Mona, said the roads mentioned by Alli at the meeting were being considered as “potential” toll roads.
“If studies show that they are not viable and tolling is not the best way to finance them, then the potential is dead,” he said. “We will never promote projects that are not viable. We are not building new toll roads. The only two toll roads in the pipeline are the N1-N2 Winelands and the N2 Wild Coast.”
Mona said there was a long process before a road was declared a toll road and ministerial approval as well as environmental impact assessment studies needed to be done. He said it would not happen without consulting the affected communities and conducting socio-economic impact studies.
Mona accused the DA of using the proposals as part of its campaign for the national elections next year.
“The DA may want to consider what its present stance on the issue of tolling and the user-pay principle does to its credibility,” he said.
“Let’s look at history and it will show that the DA is being disingenuous and scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
Mona said it was saying “a lot about the DA credibility” to pretend that it did not embrace the user-charge principle and e-tolling after the DA introduced tolling at Chapman’s Peak in Cape Town in 2012.
Cosatu’s secretary in KwaZulu-Natal, Zet Luzipho, said the labour federation would oppose any plans to build new tolls.
“It won’t happen, it will never happen. Not a single brick will be laid, we will oppose it… the mandate of Sanral is to build roads, it is not to tax people unnecessarily.
“We are being abused financially,” he said.
Luzipho said it was worrying that Sanral was prepared to construct tolls on existing roads and accused Sanral of not caring about the impact tolls would have on consumer costs and food prices.
Ted Holden, chairman of the Upper South Coast Anti-Toll Alliance, said they should not be made to pay for a funding model that would not benefit them.
“Why should we on the upper South Coast have to fund this, the only reason they want to add tolls here is because they did a survey and found that 20 000 cars pass the Moss Kolnick intersection per day.
“They want to put these tolls here so they can fund the building of roads and bridges down there (in the Eastern Cape).”
Roodt, the chief economist of the Efficient Group, said consumers were being burdened.
Principle
“The principle of a toll road is a good thing, but consumers will always be resistant because people do not trust the process and they are not happy about the way these processes are being conducted. Other people genuinely feel they are being over taxed, and every time they have to pay more.”
He said the tolls would affect everyone and not only the communities in which they were being built.
Professor Bonke Dumisa, an economist and the professor of economics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said if Sanral thought it would construct tolls unopposed, it was “in for a big shock”.
Sanral announced this month that e-tolling would be implemented in Gauteng within the next two months, subject to its adoption by the National Council of Provinces.
In April last year, the High Court in Pretoria granted the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa) an interdict approving a full judicial review before electronic tolling could be put into effect.
The interdict prevented Sanral from levying or collecting e-tolls pending the outcome of a review. Sanral and the National Treasury appealed against the court order.
In September, the Constitutional Court set aside the interim order. In December the Pretoria High Court dismissed Outa’s application to scrap e-tolling.
On January 25, the court granted Outa leave to take the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein.
The SCA hearing will take place in September. - Daily News