SANRAL advised to withdraw e-toll summons

To date, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) have served notices to SANRAL, in defence of 112 of our supporters who have been caught up in SANRAL’s mass 6,500 summons submission campaign.

During the defence process, OUTA has questioned the poor content and highly questionable information, which lacks necessary detail and has also incorrectly referenced the laws and regulations related to the alleged transgressions provided by SANRAL in their e-toll legal declarations.

“We sincerely believe that SANRAL will have an almost impossible task of justifying these charges and all likelihood is that SANRAL may have to pull the plug and recall all the e-toll summonses issued to date,” says Ivan Herselman, OUTA’s legal director. “In addition to the questionable quality of the summonses issued, the poor quality of road users address and contact details in both the national vehicle licensing (e-Natis) and e-toll systems, has given rise to many summonses not even reaching the road-user and is causing untold frustration and increased costs to SANRAL. We have also received calls from many motorists who recently received SANRAL’s SMS message to inform them of a court case number and civil summons being dispatched to them, yet they have never received these summonses.”

We have previously suggested that SANRAL would be wise to conduct a test case, covering the various scenarios of fleet users through to individuals, to assess not only the legality but also practical workability and impact of the e-toll scheme on society. “However, it would appear that SANRAL’s continued arrogance and blind approach to bull-doze ahead with a mass civil coercion campaign, in the hope that it would generate a reaction by the public to comply with the scheme, may backfire on them,” says Wayne Duvenage, OUTA’s Chairman.

OUTA has also recently learnt of another worrying problem whereby SANRAL proceeded to issue a summons to a motorist who had participated in SANRAL’s recent discount offer, and who had settled their outstanding e-toll debt in full during the dispensation period. “We witness a plethora of administrative bungles and problems related to the e-toll scheme every day, which is indicative of serious systemic problems and unworkability of the scheme,” says Wayne Duvenage, OUTA’s Chairperson. “It’s time for sanity to prevail and for Government and SANRAL to cancel the e-toll scheme once and for all.”