E-tolls have officially collapsed: Outa

Outa has said the demise of e-tolls is confirmed after Sanral admitted its failure to collect outstanding e-toll debt.

Sanral spokesperson Vusi Mona recently told Fin24 that road users paid R40 million in the first four weeks of the 60% discount offer, which kicked off on 2 November 2015.

Mark Ridgeway, the COO of ETC, said the outstanding debt by members of the public who were not paying e-tolls was R5.9 billion, calculated at the 60% discounted tariffs.

Outa said these numbers show that Sanral was only able to raise R40 million out of R5.9 billion, which is less than 1% of the total debt.

“Sanral’s latest dispensation is their latest desperate attempt to lure the defiant public back on board,” said Outa.

“Their dispensation offer is supported by another multi-million rand marketing campaign and kicked into play on 2 November, and has clearly been a disaster.”

Outa said a clawback of less than R500 million per month on average for the six-month period would still put the scheme at risk.

“In our opinion, there is no way the e-toll scheme can recover from this reaction to their latest dispensation.”

“The public have spoken and accordingly they have sent a strong message to the government that they will not be coerced, intimidated, or fooled into paying these irrational e-toll taxes.”

“The time has arrived for the Minister of Transport to now step in and call off this charade. Sanral is wasting millions of tax-payers money every month on an advertising campaign that is being ignored by the public.”