FF Plus demands more Gauteng tolls info

2011-05-31 22:31

Pretoria - The Freedom Front Plus announced on Monday that it intends forcing the SA National Road Agency (Sanral) to reveal all the costs associated with the Gauteng Highway Improvement Project.

Spokesperson Anton Alberts said that he would be lodging an application on Tuesday in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act to obtain all documents from Sanral that "would indicate what the real costs of the Gauteng Highway Improvement Project have been to date and what formula was used to calculate the tariffs".

He said he would also want to know who was involved with the project.

"It appears that the published costs of the project of Sanral is less than half of the true expenses paid to date and that Sanral did not act very transparently," he said.

The application follows a news report on Friday in the Star newspaper which quoted a confidential report sent anonymously to the newspaper.

The report said that the cost of operating the Gauteng tolls could be as high as R14bn.

On Monday the newspaper reported that "a private company appeared to have acted as judge, jury and executioner in the Gauteng toll road project".

Alberts said: "More and more information comes to light every day which indicates that the process was possibly cooked up and that taxpayers and road users are possibly being caught with a trick by being forced to pay for an expensive project which could apparently have been handled more cost effectively."

- SAPA