South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) CEO Skhumbuzo Macozoma has warned that the continued nonpayment of e-toll fees in Gauteng now poses a threat to the future of the agency at a national scale.<\/p>\n
Macozoma was speaking alongside\u00a0Rail Safety Regulator (RSR) CEO Nkululeko Poya at a\u00a0Parliament\u2019s portfolio committee on transport according to a report by BusinessDay<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Calling the non-payment of the tolls a “continued civil disobedience campaign”,\u00a0Macozoma said that the poor collection numbers had already stalled a number of planned projects and upgrades around the country and had resulted in the agency revising\u00a0its\u00a0job-creation targets by over 10,000 people.<\/p>\n He also noted that\u00a0the lack of income had made it next to impossible to\u00a0set and achieve sustainable targets in its annual performance plans.<\/p>\n Macozoma further warned that if the agency continued to fail in meeting its collection targets, it could lead to further ratings downgrades\u00a0and would likely postpone another bond issuance.<\/p>\n Earlier this week\u00a0Civil action group Outa noted\u00a0that the summonses sent out to over 6,000 motorists for the non-payment of e-tolls have a number of irregularities that make them unlikely to pass legal muster \u2013 but warns motorists not to simply ignore them.<\/p>\n Ignoring the summons will lead to another default judgement against those implicated, as was seen in a recent case with a business owner in the south of Johannesburg, said\u00a0Outa\u2019s transport portfolio spokesperson, Ben Theron.<\/p>\n While Sanral claims that this default judgement sets a precedent against those who refuse to pay e-tolls, Outa insists that no precedent has been set outside the fact that, yes, you have have to go to court when you have been summoned.<\/p>\nShould you pay?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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