COSATU condemns Kapsch profits

The Congress of South African Trade Unions is appalled that Austrian e-tolling company, Kapsch TrafficCom, expects to rake in annual revenue of 50 million Euros (R664 million) every year, for the next eight years, from Gauteng's e-tolling system (see report).

The e-tolling system is planned to collect total revenue of between R3 and R3.5-billion a year, of which, we now know, approximately R1.5-billion a year will be spent on the actual process of collecting tolls by Kapsch, which will be at least as much as the cost of the road improvements themselves. This makes the argument for tolls more and more untenable, and the argument for using taxation more and more obvious.

This is further evidence that e-tolls amount to the commodification of our highways - a business opportunity for a private company, rather than a basic public service for the community.

As OUTA Chairperson, Wayne Duvenage, has pointed out: "Every Rand we send overseas to Kapsch is one Rand less which is available for infrastructure development. And it is also one Rand less in disposable income for the citizens who have to pay."

He added that the scale of Kapsch's earnings left no doubt about the reasons for the high costs involved, making this the most expensive tolling system in the world. "If road-building was funded from taxation, the gross waste of half a billion Rand per year on a private overseas company's services could be averted".

COSATU fully supports OUTA's call "for the Public Protector, or possibly even a judicial commission of enquiry, to deeply probe the e-tolling deal. South Africa's citizens deserve to know why government has committed itself to outsourcing infrastructure funding to the private sector despite the vast wasted costs of doing so".

This news will make workers more determined than ever to fight e-tolling and support the call for an efficient, safe and affordable public transport system.

COSATU urges all its members, and all the citizens of Gauteng and the rest of South Africa, to support the next round of mass protest on the highways, on 24 June in Johannesburg and 2 July in Tshwane, and to continue not to register with Sanral and not to buy e-tags, so that we make the system unworkable.

Statement issued by Patrick Craven, COSATU national spokesperson, June 13 2013

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