{"id":416278,"date":"2021-09-29T13:44:27","date_gmt":"2021-09-29T11:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=416278"},"modified":"2021-09-29T13:49:30","modified_gmt":"2021-09-29T11:49:30","slug":"why-e-tolls-arent-dead-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/motoring\/416278-why-e-tolls-arent-dead-yet.html","title":{"rendered":"Why E-tolls aren’t dead yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) believes<\/a><\/strong> that corruption, or the diversion of funds to areas where it should not be going, is probably the reason government hasn\u2019t shut down E-tolls.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe the continued operation of the Gauteng e-tolls, which only around 15% of motorists are contributing toward, has little to do with the search for a new funding mechanism,\u201d says Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It has] more to do with where some of the current R50 million or so each month is actually going,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Outa said it bases its assertion on five observations.<\/p>\n

Firstly, the five-year e-toll collection contract ended three years ago, followed by extensions until December 2021. No further extensions are possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thus, there is no contractual obligation or penalties to keep the contract alive.<\/p>\n

Secondly, approximately R50m to R55m is collected by the Electronic Toll Collection company (ETC) each month.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Outa says this raises several questions: How much of this is actually being allocated to cover the costs of the collection process? Who are the companies that are supplying \u201cservices\u201d to ETC?<\/p>\n

Thirdly, Outa says it has unanswered questions from the South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) and ETC regarding the allocation of R10m to a \u201cBEE Facilitation service provider\u201d \u2014 PRO-ASH.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe this was a corrupt transaction, the cost of which was passed on to the motorists,\u201d Outa stated.<\/p>\n

Carte Blanche, together with MyBroadband, investigated the allegations against ProAsh<\/strong><\/a> in March.<\/p>\n

The two directors of ProAsh Property Investments, trading as ProAsh Business Services, have ties to South Africa\u2019s telecommunications sector \u2014 most notably to the origins of Cell C and Ubambo Investment Holdings<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The allegation made against ETC concerning ProAsh was essentially that the relationship between the companies amounted to fronting.<\/p>\n

According to a Section 34 report filed with the Hawks, ETC was contractually obligated to spend some of its budget with small and medium enterprises.<\/p>\n

ETC counted the money that it spent on ProAsh towards this obligation. However, the allegations stated that the payments were not aligned with the contractual requirements Sanral placed on ETC.<\/p>\n

ProAsh confirmed that it was paid R279,999.96 per month for 36 months between 2009 and 2012, totalling over R10 million. However, it denied the allegations of fronting.<\/p>\n

\u201cProAsh is not and was never a BEE front for ETC,\u201d the company stated.<\/p>\n

It emphatically denied allegations that ProAsh was paid to use its influence to help Kapsch TrafficCom secure the Sanral e-tolls collections contract for ETC.<\/p>\n

\"Wayne<\/a>

Wayne Duvenage, Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse CEO<\/p><\/div>\n

Fourthly, Outa highlighted allegations over Austrian-based Kapsch TrafficCom\u2014the owners of the local ETC operation\u2014which was implicated in a dubious and possibly corrupt transaction in Zambia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MyBroadband also reported on this in March, and documents given to the National Prosecuting Authority alleged that a Kapsch subsidiary in Zambia called Intelligent Mobility Solutions had paid bribes to several government officials<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

None of the individuals implicated in Zambia responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Kapsch rubbished the allegations brought against it by the whistleblower but declined to answer specific questions about the matter.<\/p>\n

Outa said the Zambian transaction was valued at US$5.5m (R83 million) and was channelled through Kapsch\u2019s South African accounts.<\/p>\n

Fifthly, the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Plan (GFIP), at the cost of R17.9 billion, is well over twice the price it should have been.<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to Outa, this clearly indicates that Sanral either deliberately sanctioned the overpayments or allowed gross maladministration and undue profiteering from the project by local contractor companies.<\/p>\n

Regarding the future of the E-toll project, Outa said there are very few options to consider.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only alternative to e-tolls is for the GFIP bonds to be financed via National Treasury,\u201d the civil action group stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cTreasury has already allocated Sanral R10.8 billion for GFIP \u2014 around 51% of the freeway bonds for the overpriced upgrade,\u201d it said<\/p>\n

This is on top of a grant of R70 billion between 2016 and 2010 \u2014 a yearly average of R14 billion per annum \u2014 for non-tolled roads.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been the solution being practised for the past number of years and should continue to remain, as the entire country benefits from Gauteng\u2019s freeway upgrade,\u201d said Outa.<\/p>\n

\n

Now read: Exposed \u2013 Astounding corruption allegations inside e-tolls<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Outa explains why it believes corruption, or the diversion of funds to areas where it should not be going, is probably the reason government hasn’t shut down E-tolls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":412824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29366],"tags":[9413,35,21759,10142],"class_list":["post-416278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motoring","tag-e-tolls","tag-headline","tag-opposition-to-urban-tolling-alliance-outa","tag-wayne-duvenage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416280,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416278\/revisions\/416280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}