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COSATU: Statement by the Congress of South African Trade Union, e-tolls - the fight goes on! (27/09/2013)

27th September 2013

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The Congress of South African Trade Unions has noted the signing of the Transport Laws and Related Matters Amendment Bill by President Zuma, which clears the path for the implementation of e-tolling.

This will not however change the federation`s determined opposition to this attempt to privatise our highways and start charging the people of Gauteng to travel on roads they have already paid for through taxes and the fuel levy.

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The fight against e-tolling - and for efficient, reliable, affordable and safe public transport for all the people - has always been political rather than legal, and our campaign of mass action will now be raised to a higher level of intensity.

At the same time we wait with interest the outcome of the legal action being taken by OUTA in the Supreme Court of Appeal, which may yet see e-tolling declared unlawful.

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Whatever the outcome of that case however, COSATU will continue with the campaign of marches and highly successful drive-slows on the highways. We shall continue to urge motorists not to register with Sanral or buy e-tags, and to make the system unworkable.

Public support keeps growing and we are certain that people power will finally convince the government to abandon a policy with is extremely unpopular, unfair and unworkable, for the following reasons:

1. Tolls will add to the burdens of workers and the poor, who will be forced to pay to travel on highways which were previously free of charge. It is a lie that only the middle class use our highways. Many low income earners use private cars to travel to work not through choice but because they have no reliable alternative. They are already burdened by rising fuel prices and electricity tariffs, and the tolls will be yet another blow.

2. It will not just affect the people of Gauteng; the government has now conceded that e-tolling will replace the existing toll-gates, and be used for future road projects throughout the country. Tolls will also put an indirect burden on the poor of the whole country, by adding to the cost of transporting goods, which will have an immediate effect on food inflation.

3. Tolls will perpetuate exclusion: `User-pays` means that you cannot use the best roads if you cannot afford to pay the tolls. Those without money will be barred from the best roads, and forced on to the potholed side roads, while those with the money glide along the highways in their fancy cars.

4. The `user-pays` principle is a thoroughly capitalist and elitist concept, totally at odds with the progressive and socialist belief that public services should be delivered on the basis of people`s needs and not the size of their bank balances. Taken to its logical conclusion `user-pays` would mean that only the sick would pay for medical services and only the parents of school-age children would pay for education.

5. To its credit, the government is moving in the opposite direction in those areas, with the extension of no-fee schools and the roll-out of the national health insurance system. Yet public roads are just as much a basic public service, which people use through necessity rather than choice, because our public transport system is expensive, unsafe and unreliable.

6. There is a genuine problem of congestion on our roads, but this will not be solved by forcing people to pay to use them and excluding those who cannot pay, but by steadily improving our public transport services, making them more reliable, accessible, affordable and safe, until they become the preferred way to travel, and motorists can safely leave their cars at home.

7. The introduction of a tolling system that uses the private sector to operate the tolls is a form of privatisation, turning what ought to be a publicly-funded essential service into a commodity. Even worse is that the contracts signed with the private companies operating the tolls remain secret. Evidence indicates that their revenues from the tolls will be enormous and that after the initial loans have been quickly paid off, the private operators will milk the public into the indefinite future.

8. The tolls will be ridiculously expensive to collect. According to Sanral`s own estimate, at least 17% of the money collected in tolls will simply be used to collect the money. So tolls are not only unfair but also a grossly inefficient way of raising the money for road improvements. If the government makes further cuts in tariffs, an even bigger portion of the revenue collected will ultimately find its way into the pockets of the private toll operators. Trying to collect all this money from four million motorists will be impossible to manage and will become unworkable.

9. COSATU has consistently argued that when additional revenues have to be raised by government, then this must be done through the tax system, rather than tolls which take no account of the drivers` ability to pay. Taxation is both fairer, since the more you earn the more you pay, and far easier to collect.

  • Stop the privatisation of our public highways!
  • Reject user-pays for basic public services! Don`t buy e-tags!
  • Don`t register will Sanral!
  • Make e-tolling unworkable!
- See more at: http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=7846#sthash.pkrKDwQI.dpuf

 

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