The South African National Roads Agency
(“SANRAL”) has sold R20 billion worth of bonds since 2008 to finance the Gauteng
Freeway Improvement Project (“GFIP”) and planned to use tolling revenue to
repay the money. Add reported additional revenue and the cost is the same as
the Gautrain (R25 billion). The Mail & Gaurdian has reported that Sanral
had built up a R37,5 billion debt.
The length of highways upgraded is almost
the same as the length of Gautrain railway tracks. Consider the expensive
underground tunneling operations, the railway stock and the beautiful Gautrain
stations and it is hard to imagine where the toll road money went to, for what seems
to be simple maintenance and improvements to our existing transport
infrastructure.
The highways were all there before – they have just been
resurfaced with some improvements to intersections and road widths.
The 20 000 m2 SANRAL Central
Operations Centre of the GFIP project (opposite the SA Mint on the Ben Schoeman
highway) is certainly a beautiful A-grade building and it is apparent that the
architect was under no obligation to save on costs.
The dozen or more satellite
centres distributed around Gauteng
have a similar feel, not to mention the numerous gantries with their “blue
light brigade” feel.
The numerous e-Toll registration offices
found in shopping centres around the province are each staffed by three very
bored individuals. It is also apparent that there was no cost spared on the
computer equipment at these centres, linking them undoubtedly to a super data
centre at the Central Operations Centre. The costs of the computer servers
running such a massive data capturing and revenue generating business must be
comparable to that of a bank and have cost tax payers millions of rands - but
surely not all adding up to R25 billion?
The cost of administering the collection of
toll revenue is massively excessive and could have been avoided by simply increasing
the fuel levy. All the new buildings, vast infrastructure and human resources
involved in such collection is therefore superfluous and a complete waste of
tax payers money.
It is time that Sibusiso Ndebele, the
Minister of Transport, make public a full breakdown of the costs and the
financial model of repayment.
The responsible SANRAL engineering consultants,
Tolplan and TIS (Toll Infrastructure Services) – both white owned and managed -
need to also be questioned at a public hearing and answer to their professional
responsibilities in terms of their code of conduct and value-engineering
objectives governed by the Engineering Council of South Africa (“ECSA”) and the
applicable engineering Acts of South Africa. The trolls in our tolls may very
well be the consultants.
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