“With the future of the Gauteng toll road becoming increasingly uncertain, the time has come for SANRAL to reveal exactly how much it still owes for the upgrade of the province’s road infrastructure,” Adv. Anton Alberts, the FF Plus’ parliamentary spokesperson on Transport says.
Adv. Alberts says there should be a thorough re-calculation of the aforementioned debt of approximately R20 billion following the finding of the Competition Tribunal that there was collusion between the country’s largest construction companies with the building of, amongst others, the toll road system.
The tribunal has to date already issued 28 certificates to SANRAL for the work undertaken by a number of construction companies.
SANRAL confirmed several months ago in a media release that it is at present cooperating with experts to determine which amounts were at stake and precisely how much it could claim back from the construction companies.
According to Adv. Alberts, it is of the greatest importance that this process is transparent as SANRAL’s debt is collected directly from road users. “If the comments made last week by the Premier of Gauteng, David Makhura, are taken into consideration SANRAL’s debt could possibly be collected from motorists in the form of a national levy instead of the e-toll fees.
“The FF Plus will ensure that SANRAL is honest about this debt as the public has to pay it in the end.
“The process to claim the funds back from construction companies who were involved in the graft should also be completed quickly and steps should be taken to charge the individuals who had been involved in the collusion.
“The amounts involved with the corruption which were perpetrated nationally by the companies and which range from the building of the Green Point Stadium to the Gauteng E-Toll Roads is probably unprecedented in South Africa.
“Nearly half of it involves projects on roads and it could make a sizeable difference to the debt of SANRAL,” Adv. Alberts says.
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