'Scrap e-tolls or face consequences'

E-toll (Etoll) gantry on the N1. 061114. Picture: Chris Collingridge 821

E-toll (Etoll) gantry on the N1. 061114. Picture: Chris Collingridge 821

Published Feb 20, 2015

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Johannesburg - Scrap e-tolls or face a possible decline in electoral support in Gauteng.

This was provincial DA leader John Moodey’s advice to the ANC on Thursday.

Scrapping the e-tolls was the DA’s priority before Premier David Makhura’s State of the Province Address on Monday. Moodey said the alternative was to put the issue to a referendum for people to decide.

He said Makhura must ensure that all government departments were encouraged to do their work to avoid service delivery protests.

Moodey said Makhura’s panel, set up to assess the impact of e-tolls on residents, had found that it was harming the poor.

“During its consultation process and in the panel’s final report, it became abundantly clear that e-tolls were forced on to the citizens of Gauteng with limited consultation, and that their unilateral implementation harmed the poor, the working class and the provincial economy.

“The people of this province have on numerous occasions and on numerous platforms said e-tolls must go, yet the premier and the ANC refused to recommend they be scrapped.

“Only one solution remains and that is for the premier to announce a provincial referendum on the future of e-tolls in his address.”

Local Government the coalface

Local government remained the coalface of the government’s service delivery agenda, Moodey said; it was where the political will to do or not to do had the most direct impact on the day-to-day lives of the people.

This administration needed to pay heed to the cries of people living in municipalities in the province who were in a daily struggle for water, electricity and decent housing.

Corruption, he added, was running rampant, the law was openly flouted, wrongdoers were protected and communities’ service delivery needs are disregarded.

Instead of telling “the good story” to his comrades and his friends on Monday, Makhura must be the “activist premier” he purports to be, and lead his government and the people of Gauteng into an era of prosperity and economic growth, free from e-tolls, corruption, nepotism and maladministration.

The Star

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