Outa: E-toll opponents not the enemy

Cape Town - The Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa) said it is shocked to hear insinuations from the authorities that those opposed to the e-toll plan are partially to blame for the “hoax call” behaviour of one of their contracted employees.

The South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) insisted on Thursday that a man arrested in connection with threats against the company was technically not one of its employees.

The 28-year-old man was accused of involvement in two white powder scares and a bomb scare at Sanral headquarters in the past two weeks.

In a statement, Outa said it is "appalled" at Sanral’s claim that the arrested man is not one of their employees. 

"While strictly speaking he may not have a direct contract with Sanral, he is an employee of their system, be it through other suppliers or brokers who provide services to the e-tolling process. 

"The person worked on their site and he was internally linked to their system, so trying to fob this off as someone else’s problem is ludicrous to say the least," said Outa spokesperson John Clarke. 

Clarke added that any negative consequences and outcomes relating to the e-toll "debacle" should be placed squarely at the feet of Sanral.

The company has no right to place any blame on movements such as trade federation Cosatu, the biking community, the South African Local Government Association, business organisations and civil society entities in general, who are all largely opposed to e-tolls. 

Outa reports it is making good progress in collating and analysing the complaints "received from thousands of angry citizens who are fed-up with Sanral’s behaviour", which will be mediated to the public protector in due course.

"We will keep the pressure on Sanral to provide the public with the information rightfully required to know what is really happening behind the closed doors of the operations centre in terms of e-tags registered, revenue collected, handling of complaints, etc," said Clarke.

The scares at Sanral's operations centre should be interpreted as a warning to the government, said Freedom Front Plus MP Anton Alberts.

"It is clear that the public is despondent and battered by what they view as unreasonable action by the state," he said in a statement.

According to Alberts, the party is prepared to help people report their problems with the toll system to the National Consumer Commission.