Today, the Transport Laws and Related Matters Amendment Bill 2012 (e-tolling Bill) was discussed in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) Select Committee on Public Services. The manner in which the Bill was dealt with by the Chairperson of the Committee, Mtikeni Sibande was an utter disgrace. None of the conventions required for the legislative process in the NCOP were followed. It would therefore appear that the ANC is attempting to rush the e-tolling Bill through the NCOP without adhering to the conventions required.

Does Mr Sibande have a directive from Luthuli House to make sure that the e-tolling Bill is passed through the NCOP, whatever the cost, in order to allow the Department of Transport to build toll-roads around the country without consulting the public?

I will today write to the Chairperson of the NCOP, Mninwa Mahlangu, requesting that the meeting be reconvened and the e-tolling Bill be dealt with properly.

According parliamentary conventions, a Bill that has been referred a NCOP committee must be debated in detail. If there is great public interest in a bill, the committee should organise public hearings. None of this happened in today’s meeting, and in fact, our request for public hearings was denied.

A number of irregularities occurred during the meeting, including:

• The Chair did not allow the Committee to consider the Bill clause by clause;
• The Chair did not clarify which amendments were accepted;
• Only verbal amendments were considered and no final, printed version of the Bill was presented for consideration;
• The Chair allowed extensive comments from ANC MP’s but did not allow similar time for comments from the DA and other opposition parties; and
• The Chair did not call for a vote on the Bill – the committee did not accept nor reject the Bill.

Furthermore the DA’s request that further public hearings be held on the e-Tolls Bill - a bill, much like the Secrecy Bill, in which there is much public interest - was rejected by the Chair. Moreover, public hearings were only convened in Gauteng, despite the Bill impacting all Provinces.

It is unacceptable that any piece of legislation that has been shown to have a detrimental effect on the poor is passed without the opinions of millions of people in South Africa’s provinces being heard, with clear disregard for parliamentary conventions.

The DA will not allow the e-tolling Bill to pass through the NCOP without a fight.