LOUISE FLANAGAN and ANGELIQUE SERRAO
THE Gauteng provincial government started registering thousands of its vehicles yesterday – without having budgeted for the cost.
The DA wants to know: Will the provincial government be able to pay Sanral on time, and where will the money come from?
First to be registered was Premier Nomvula Mokonyane’s official vehicle, a black BMW.
“We will have to budget for paying for the tolls,” she said.
The registrations started at the Gauteng G-fleet depot in Bedfordview, said Roads and Transport MEC Ismail Vadi.
The head of the Gauteng Roads and Transport Department, Mavela Dlamini, said there were 7 400 vehicles in the fleet.
“We have to register every one of those,” he said.
With 7 400 vehicles, G-fleet could pay up to R4 million a month on toll fees if every vehicle used the full capped toll fee of R550 a month.
Startlingly, there’s no mention of toll fees in the Gauteng government budget documents for any department, and Dlamini confirmed that no budget had been drawn up.
He said his department would pay the tolls and then charge the client departments, in the same way that traffic tickets were passed on.
“We’ll have to find savings to fund it. It’s basically a cash-flow issue – we’ll have to fund it and then recover it.”
Dlamini said the billing would be inter-governmental, so it should be “reasonably easy” for his department to recover the costs.
G-fleet will be a key account holder with a single e-toll account for multiple vehicles, with tags for each vehicle.
Dlamini said government accountants were still looking at the best method, but the province would look at the prepaid account with a view to getting maximum discounts.
Sanral CEO Nazir Alli said about 320 000 vehicles were already registered for e-tolls, but he could not give details of how the G-fleet payments would work.
“We’ll be making different arrangements with our key account holders,” he said.
Alli said there would be no discount for government vehicles – excluding emergency and police vehicles – other than those which the public get.
The Gauteng government made it clear that tolling would start on schedule on April 30 and that the provincial government would support it.
It would not comment on Cosatu’s threats to protest on the highways if tolls go ahead.
Mokonyane said: “There’s nothing that has come before me that, come the end of April, the roads are going to be closed. We’re rolling it. It’s happening. We will lead by example.”
Vadi said: “From the government side the debates are over.
“The e-tolls will be rolled out from April 30.”
The DA’s Neil Campbell questioned whether G-fleet would be able to pay the bills on time as required by Sanral.
He said Gauteng government departments owed g-fleet R300m from car usage last year.
“G-fleet is even threatening to cut some departments off,” said Campbell. “The Gauteng Department of Health owes g-fleet over R100m. Municipalities have not budgeted for toll fees.
“Where will they find the millions they will soon have to pay? The concern is that the only way they will find the money is to put up rates and taxes up, and again the public will be paying more.”
The Star put queries to the Joburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane metros, asking how many cars they own and if they had budgeted for tolling. None replied.
Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi said the fact that the G-fleet was registering e-tags showed that government employees with government cars would not be paying for their own toll fees.
“It’s easy to agree to projects when you aren’t personally responsible for paying the account, unlike the ordinary public who have to foot the bill for this,” he said.