The South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) will refund e-toll account-holders who were already being charged, despite the system not yet being operational.
Several e-toll account-holders complained on social networking sites about being charged administration fees for the controversial system that is only set to be implemented in February.
Account registrations commenced on 7 November. As part of this process, road users paid R50 into their accounts to create an initial balance.
“As part of the normal customer service, a statement is issued to the customer twice a month. For those customers who elected to have their statements posted, the specified service fee is R5. The existence of these charges is in the terms and conditions, available at point-of-purchase for e-tags and [on the] e-toll Web site,” says the Agency.
Media reports say that, apart from the R5, there are fees of 20c being charged for SMS notifications.
However, the charges that have occurred were levied erroneously, says Sanral.
“This is a result of failure to deactivate them now, and reactivating those once tolling starts. We have now deactivated the charges.”
All fees associated with this error will be reversed over the next few days, according to Sanral.
“Individual customers are currently being contacted to communicate with them regarding this matter.”
The Democratic Alliance, via its campaign against e-tolling, TollFreeGP, said the premature charges are just another reason to boycott the e-tolling system.
After Sanral announced it would refund the amounts to account-holders, the campaign asked followers to keep up the pressure, adding: “We can stop these tolls.”
February implementation
Cabinet in August approved reduced tariffs for e-tolling in Gauteng, which dictate that motorcycles (Class A1) with e-tags will pay 24c/km; light vehicles (Class A2) will pay 40c/km; medium vehicles (Class B) 100c/km; and “longer” vehicles (Class C) 200c/km.
Qualifying commuter taxis (Class A2) and commuter buses (Class B) are completely exempt from the e-toll system.
The reduction for light vehicles without e-tags was from 66c/km to 58c/km, and from R3.95/km for heavy vehicles without e-tags to R2.95/km.
The system is set to go live in February, despite strong opposition from labour, political parties and citizens.
E-tags are now available at Checkers, Pick n Pay and Shoprite stores, for R50. They are also available from e-toll customer service outlets in shopping malls across Gauteng, consumer centres along the Gauteng e-road, via www.sanral.co.za, or the Sanral Call Centre.
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