Calls have been made to the National Department of Transport to write off all unpaid e-toll debts immediately.

This comes after Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga said Gauteng motorists will be held liable for paying their e-toll fees until the system’s official closure on Thursday.

After its establishment in 2013 as part of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP), e-tolls will officially be scrapped after it was gazetted that segments of the Gauteng roads where e-tolls operate would be stripped of their status as continuous toll roads with electronic toll points. 

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The midnight closure follows years of debate and frustration about when the system would eventually end. The system had also faced open defiance from motorists and civil society organisations who refused to pay their e-toll fees. 

But motorists are not happy about the decision that they will be billed for using the roads while they were tolled roads—up until midnight on Wednesday.

According to the Democratic Alliance (DA) Gauteng Shadow MEC for Roads and Logistics Fred Nel MPL, the DA in Gauteng calls on the National Department of Transport to start writing off all unpaid e-toll debts immediately.

“In its entirety, e-toll debts are being repaid between the Gauteng Provincial – and National Government. Additionally, all maintenance arrears are being repaid. 

“Historic e-toll debt collection is yet another ill-fated enterprise cooked up in the premier’s office to save some face as his vanity project turned out to be, as is usually the case, a colossal failure.” 

Nel said the fact that all e-toll debts are being repaid between the Gauteng Government and the National Government, as well as maintenance arrears being covered, makes it unnecessary and ill-conceived to pursue historic e-toll debt at all.

“The question must have been asked who will own the e-toll debtors’ book if the debts are not written off? It would be unjust to give the debts to SANRAL after the national and provincial governments settle its debts.” 

According to Nel, one man’s vanity project has now, once more, become millions of South African’s problems.

“At the moment Gauteng residents are already encumbered with the almost R14 billion e-toll debt that the Gauteng government must settle. 

“It is unfair to burden them more than they have already been with an ill-conceived money-making scheme, a failure from when the first gantry went up, to when they were switched off.” 

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