Johannesburg - The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse has labelled the statement on Monday by the South African National Roads Agency Limited that it would attempt to recover only R760 million from companies that allegedly colluded to overcharge the agency on road-building contracts as "a slap in the face for the people of South Africa".
And apparently not all of that R760 million was spent on the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project, while Outa contends that Sanral was overcharged by at least R10 billion on the e-tolled roads alone.
"It took Sanral nearly three years to come up with this miniscule calculation," said Outa chairman Wayne Duvenage, "and it's vague and lacking in detail."
Duvenage insisted that Sanral should state right up front how much of the R760 million it intended to recover from the construction companies was connected to the contentious freeway project. What were the other projects Sanral was referring to, he asked, and how much was being claimed on each of them, especially in light of the fact one supplier was responsible for 74 percent of the claims due.
Also read: Outa firm on road rip-off claim
In any case, he pointed out, this adjustment would make little difference to the estimated R10 - R11 billion that Sanral had been overcharged on the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project.
When would Sanral answer the simple question: "Did the public receive fair value for the GFIP at R17.9 billion?", he wanted to know.
"Sanral recently attempted to downplay our research on the GFIP construction benchmarking paper - but they got their millions mixed up with billions and simply embarrassed themselves," Duvenage said.
"But because Sanral questioned our benchmarking," he added, we did more research on local benchmark cases, which further substantiated our claim that the public has been grossly overcharged for this project, under Sanral's management. This will be reported on in greater detail in due course."
Outa would not allow Sanral to fob off this issue, he promised, until the agency had explained in detail why this situation had arisen and how it intended to account for billion by which it been overcharged.