The Justice Project SA (JPSA) has slammed the SA National Roads Agency's (Sanral's) plan to prosecute e-toll transgressors, saying it is "severely flawed" and amounts to scare tactics by the state-owned agency.
Sanral's recovery plan, upon the commencement of e-tolls, indicates that Gauteng motorists who fail to cough up for e-tolls could be criminally prosecuted.
As motorists await what the Department of Transport has tagged inevitable - the eventual commencement of open road tolling on Gauteng's highways - Sanral has been readying itself for the equal inevitability of mass e-toll evasion, and has a plan for violators that will ultimately see them being handed over to the National Prosecuting Authority.
Punishment process
According to Vusi Mona, GM of communications at Sanral, road users will have seven days, from the first gantry pass, to pay their e-toll transactions. "If the e-toll transaction is not paid within seven days, it is transferred to the violations processing centre (the section of e-toll operations that deals with overdue toll amounts)."
Mona says all discounts will fall away when transactions are in the violations processing centre, and the alternative toll tariff will then apply. During this stage, transactions will be tallied and an invoice submitted to the road user, who will be given an opportunity to settle the amount payable and - depending on the time within which the fees are paid - post-grace-period discounts might apply (another seven days).
"During that time, a debt collection process will take place and, once it appears that the debt collection process is unsuccessful, a final demand will be issued and the issue handed over to the prosecuting authority."
As part of Sanral's enforcement strategy, says Mona, "mobile units with traffic officers will be stationed at on- and off-ramps, and will also roam the Gauteng e-roads for enforcement of outstanding infringements".
Forty-nine gantries span Gauteng's highways. Toll fees are charged per overhead gantry passed, rather than the kilometres a vehicle travels. Each time a vehicle passes underneath a gantry, the toll fee is charged as a single transaction - with the cost per gantry being determined by the kilometre distance it represents.
Easier said than done
But while it is easy for Sanral to say how the agency will deal with e-toll rebels, says JPSA national chairman Howard Dembovsky, it is not so easy to carry out these "threats".
Dembovsky says Sanral's punishment plan amounts to scare tactics, and is unreasonable in light of the likely volume of offenders and the limited capacity SA's criminal justice system has to deal with them.
According to SA's electronic National Traffic Information System (eNatis), there were 3 799 750 road users registered in Gauteng, as at 30 June. Dembovsky says the fact that Sanral claims around 2 500 000 of these use Gauteng's e-toll freeways on a daily/monthly basis means more than two million vehicles do not have e-tags at this stage - 80% of vehicles on the roads in Johannesburg and Tshwane.
Sanral says SA's Criminal Procedures Act will be used to prosecute e-toll offenders - a notion Dembovsky says is entirely possible - but fails to take into account a key issue.
"What seems to have been overlooked is the fact that the National Prosecuting Authority does not prosecute one million criminal matters in total over the course of a year; let alone double that each month."
He says implementation of Sanral's idea would essentially bring the South African criminal justice system to a grinding halt. "Clearly, [Sanral] would like all prosecutions for serious crimes to be sidelined in favour of criminalising people who choose to oppose their unjust e-toll laws."
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