JPSA not surprised at SANRAL’s disrespectful attitude towards e-tolls review panel
JOHANNESBURG – Justice Project South Africa has seen the media release sent out by SANRAL on Thursday 4 September 2014 and wishes to express its lack of any surprise to any and all of the contents contained therein, save for the statement that
“they have been in the public domain for years” when falsely claiming that “all e-toll documents [are] publicly available”.
It is not in the least bit atypical for SANRAL to disrespect the public, any form of legitimate process and to actively seek ways to continue to outwardly mislead the public, or anyone else for that matter. It is very accomplished in that regard and it would be unreasonable of anyone to expect SANRAL to participate in an open and fair assessment of the socio-economic impact e-tolling is having on the citizens of Gauteng without it being legally compelled to do so. After all, it must be remembered that SANRAL is currently still seeking a “secrecy order” over its Cape Winelands e-tolls project which involves one of the colluding construction companies from the GFIP despite its application for one having been dismissed by the Western Cape High Court.
It’s doubtful whether the Premier of Gauteng’s review panel on the socio-economic impact of e-tolling would accept, much less take cognisance of reams of blacked out papers from SANRAL in any event – not that its mandate has anything to do with investigating why e-tolling was chosen above the fuel levy and was implemented despite mass public disapproval plus the fact that it has already been demonstrated as being and inefficient and costly exercise in futility.
For SANRAL to say “All documents regarding the whole process around the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project are publicly available should the Gauteng provincial panel reviewing the e-tolls wish to peruse them” actively demonstrates its disrespect for all concerned and the fact that SANRAL simply cannot grasp what the mandate of the panel is – to probe the real socio-economic impact has had on the lives of citizens. And SANRAL’s spokesperson has the audacity to tell people to raise their IQs?
In our view, the participation of SANRAL in the hearings would be meaningless in any event, since it is quite clear that SANRAL has no knowledge of or desire to know about the financial hardships ordinary citizens face. All they are interested in is continuing to flog the dead horse of e-tolling “policy”, in the desperate hope that in so doing, people will eventually cave in and SANRAL won’t have to start answering questions as to why it has remained so pig-headed about protecting the ongoing interests of its so-called contractors. After all, the investors in the GFIP will get their money, regardless of whether e-tolling is used to collect it or the fuel levy is. The only real differences lie in the efficiency of the two systems to do the job and the costs that are incurred with the associated profits that contractors make in the process of collection. That is of course, ignoring the detrimental impact on the household budgets of SANRAL’s perceived cash cow that it is trying so hard to milk until it bleeds and beyond.
It’s not a train smash that SANRAL is refusing to participate in the process. To the contrary, SANRAL is doing everyone a huge favour by failing to avail itself of yet another opportunity to mislead everyone. In any event, it has already made its views well known by sending in a Trojan horse under the guise of “Consulting Engineers South Africa” to do its bidding and try to mislead the panel but that didn’t pan out too well now did it?
