The Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa) on Tuesday said it was not surprised by the low amount of payments received by the South African National Roads Agency Limited’s (Sanral’s) Violations Processing Centre (VPC), stating that this confirmed the organisation’s opinion that the “e-toll debacle is extremely inefficient and a farce of the highest proportions”.

Transport Minister Dipuo Peters on Tuesday, in a Parliamentary reply to questions posed by the Democratic Alliance, said that as of March 1, R543-million worth of Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project e-toll invoices had been transferred to the VPC, with only R50-million, or 9.21%, of these having been paid.

However, Outa chairperson Wayne Duvenage told Engineering News Online that the amount stated by the Minister “appears to be very low, as these values in the VPC process are [supposed to be] around six times [higher than] the e-tagged values”.

Therefore,  if this was the case, he said this suggested that about R100-million in e-tag-valued transactions were transferred from the Transaction Clearing House to the VPC.

“We also know that, on average, about 22% of transactions were tagged from December 3 to February 28, raising around R230-million.

“Therefore, it would appear that the R543-million they reflect as being transferred to the VPC has been done so at the e-tag rates, which doesn’t make sense,” he said, adding that “then again, nothing Sanral puts out on the e-tag numbers has made sense to date”.

Meanwhile, Peters also revealed that, as at February 28, an amount of R54.7-million, excluding VAT, had been expended in the collection of the e-toll debt.

This amount included R32.8-million for postage and printing of invoices, which was required in terms of legislation, she said, adding that “the cost of debt collection processes is, therefore, R21.95-million, which is 4% of the [R543-million] revenue and 44% of cash generated in the VPC to date”.

Duvenage pointed out that these figures meant that more was being paid to collect the debt than was being received from the public.

“[This] confirms our views that e-tolling is the most inefficient farce one could ever imagine it to be and when one considers this result, we can only ask what more does the Minister need to call off the debacle, lest we continue to throw good taxpayers money after a bad policy decision,” he said.

Engineering News Online had yet to receive a response from Sanral.