Costs and process issues predicted – Outa
Outa is not surprised at the concerns and growing incidents of debt and debt-rescue cases arising as a result of e-tolling, as was reported on January 14, by Neil Roets, the CEO of Debt Rescue.
According to Outa, one of the many unintended, but predicted consequences of e-tolling was that of increased costs to businesses and households.
“Many medium to smaller businesses are simply unable to absorb the high costs of e-tolls incurred by their fleets of vehicles, which traverse the length and breadth of the region,” says John Clarke, Outa spokesperson.
He adds that, in a number of instances, businesses have simply had to pass these costs on to the consumer and the public are reluctantly on the receiving end of the stick.
“What Sanral and the authorities played down during Outa’s court challenge was the concerns of additional costs for fleet owners, who now have to employ extra staff and systems to manage the e-toll bills, erroneous charges, cloned number plates, billing discount errors, faulty and missing tags,” he explains.
“The freeway user’s precious personal time is now being taken up by paying for tolls, checking e-toll bills and querying errors.”
The onerous conditions of managing e-tolling accounts and tags in vehicles, especially for business, has become a costly problem and a nightmare for many.
“On this note, one wonders why the questionable economic cost-to-benefit ratio has not been verified through independent studies, now that the freeway upgrade has been in place for two years,” Clarke says.
“Since e-tolling started, the extent and intensity of the complaints received by Outa from the public and businesses has clearly demonstrated that Sanral’s systems are under pressure and relying on inaccurate or meaningless data.
“The examples shown to Outa indicate that Sanral’s complaint lines and call centres are struggling to cope with the calls and queries with which they are being bombarded.”
All of this, against a backdrop of earlier comments from Sanral, that they have been “operating and testing the system for the past two years” gives rise to serious concerns about the robustness and workability of the system.
“As we have said in the past, laws and regulations are only as good as they are governable, and this specific e-tolling project is grossly inefficient, largely unworkable and difficult to enforce,” Clarke says.
“The administration costs will more than likely outweigh the collection income and the system will eventually collapse, as it has in so many other instances and countries around the world with similar challenges.”
