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Road Shedding: A by-product of government’s ‘user-pays’ mantra

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Wayne Duvenage is a businessman and entrepreneur turned civil activist. Following former positions as CEO of AVIS and President of SA Vehicle Renting and Leasing Association, Duvenage has headed the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse since its inception in 2012.

I'm not sure whether our government’s confused advocation of its ‘user-pays’ mantra is a matter to laugh or cry about. The need to get on with the development of regional socio-economic infrastructure is becoming calamitous and government would be wise to get to grips with their contradictory messages on the topic of funding essential urban transport arteries, if indeed we are to build a country that enables growth and maximises our nation’s prosperity potential.

Gauteng’s MEC for transport, Ismail Vadi, recently announced the provincial government’s sponsorship of the Gautrain – to the tune of R1.5 billion this year. During the same speech, Vadi had the audacity to say Gauteng residents must change their minds about e-tolls if we want to finance the province’s much-needed additional phases of the region’s freeway network expansion.

Were he not the serious man we have come to know, one might be forgiven to think that MEC Vadi is a joker in the pack of political ponderings for progress. In all sincerity, the mind boggles when one considers the Gautrain moves about 60,000 commuters while the region’s freeways enable over two million commuters to get to work, earn a living and pay their taxes. Not to mention the movement of goods to- and from the markets.

And the train gets the cash!

Yet, strangely enough, the MEC sees fit to siphon off almost 25% of his transport budget to bail out a ten-station exclusive high-speed train service for the richer side of society, while the freeway users are expected to pay thrice through general taxation, fuel levies and now an inefficient e-toll system, in a vain attempt to keep congestion at bay.

Throw in the annual R5 billion injection from the national executive for the terminally ill South African Airways, and the mental condition of government’s user-pays mantra gets kicked further down the corridors of double meaning and confused rationale. This worn out and highly flawed response to justify e-tolls in Gauteng is a few French fries short of a Happy Meal.

President Jacob Zuma’s committee appointed to review the mechanisms of state-owned entities dealt government’s rationale to explain the defunct e-toll scheme a blow in 2013. This committee proposed (in recommendation #21) that social infrastructure (including roads, they said), should be funded more from general taxation and have less reliance on a user pays mechanism. Ignoring this advice leaves one wondering about the billions of rands our governing authorities spend on a plethora of research, advice and guidance to govern more effectively, and why such good input is so often tossed aside.

If Vadi sincerely believes e-tolling is the answer to our freeway upgrade funding challenge, following 18 months of complete and utter disaster associated with the current scheme, one can only deduce that he and his advisors are in need of significant help.

Despite decades of talk, the inability of the provincial leadership to provide a reliable, safe and efficiently integrated public transport system in Gauteng leaves little justification to toll the region’s freeways. These routes remain the sole meaningful passages to the smooth running of the region’s economy. But they are fast becoming clogged with a new kind of ‘road shedding’ and becoming more chaotic rather than developing means for our economic survival. Time is fast running out.

One might very well assume there is an underlying tone of holding the region to ransom in Vadi’s comment that “Gauteng residents need to change their mind about e-tolling.” It is a comment that leaves one pondering what it would take for the provincial executive to realise this isn’t going to happen and that it is his mindset that needs to change on this matter. The public has no appetite to swallow government’s narrow, bigoted and schizophrenic versions of their ‘user pays’ explanation, while there are better and more rational, efficient and equitable options on the shelf of socio-economic infrastructure funding. DM

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