SANRAL self deception on e-tag sales worrying

Following OUTA’s recent research which found that less than 30% of freeway user’s vehicles are fitted with e-tags, Mr Vusi Mona, the spokesman for SANRAL says “We have approximately 66% e-tag registrations. We have more than one million e-tag registrations.”

This betrays Mr Mona’s internal confusion because this contradicts SANRAL’s own statistical modelling in which they speak of an average of 2, 5 million unique vehicles users per month on Gauteng’s freeways. Sixty six percent of 2, 5 million vehicles would mean that some 1, 65 million vehicles had fitted e-tags. The Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (OUTA) has exposed SANRAL’s deliberate misinformation about the number of e-tag sales in the past and once again, they have been deceitful by giving a false impression of the public’s acceptance of the ill-conceived scheme.

“I sense that Mr Mona is projecting the wish of his own subconscious thinking again, not an honest and transparent engagement with reality” says OUTA's spokesperson, John Clarke. “This would be faintly amusing if it wasn’t so serious, not just for SANRAL but for Gauteng residents who really do need an ‘intelligent transport system’ - which is what e-tolling was supposed to bring. It is time for us to all raise our collective IQ and get to grips with the underlying strategic blunders. We also need to address the ‘smell’ around the ethical and moral issues embodied in the e-tolling decision. Solving problems of operational inefficiency, and resolving strategic misjudgements become much easier if there is integrity at the moral and ethical level.”

“Once again, we insist that SANRAL allows an independent inspection of their system so that the constitutionally entrenched human right of access to information of citizens is satisfied. We have the right to know what the actual number of e-tag transactions is expressed as a percentage of the total. Why doesn’t SANRAL provide us with a chart that shows what has happened since e-tolling commenced on 3rd December?” added Wayne Duvenage, the Chairperson of OUTA. “The e-tag is easy enough to see. We urge the public to look around and do their own counts and they will plainly see evidence of SANRAL’s self-deception. However let us not lose sight of the underlying problem, which is the lack of a sound ethical and moral rationale for e-tolling over alternative funding options that were available.”