The first summonses to collect outstanding Gauteng e-toll debt will be issued in March, says Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) COO Mark Ridgway.
ETC collects toll fees on the Gauteng toll network on behalf of the South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral).
“There is an obligation to collect the debt and that is what we are going to do,” adds ETC CEO Jamie Surkont.
“People have a choice to pay or not to pay, as long as they realise that there are consequences to not paying. The nonpayment of toll fees is illegal.”
ETC has mandated ITC Business Administrators to collect all outstanding debt on the system. Sanral is to foot the bill for any civil action in court.
ETC has also moved to “list” vehicles that have toll debt attached them.
Surkont notes that the vehicle dealer network has requested this, as the administrative burden within dealerships to settle the outstanding toll fees has proved exceptionally cumbersome.
Listing a vehicle means, in theory, that a dealer can expect all toll bills to be settled before accepting a vehicle as a trade-in, for example, or may even penalise the owner on a trade-in in order to settle the bill.
Ridgway notes that Sanral has also indicated its intent to make any nonpayment of toll fees an Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act infringement, which means it may in future, when legally able to do so, issue traffic fines to those not settling their toll bills.
With a payment rate among regular toll-road users of greater than 50%, and with roughly 2.5-million users a month, will ETC rush out and issue millions of summonses?
No, says Ridgway. ETC will focus on those who wittingly “refuse to pay”, with so-called nonresponders second on the list.
The focus will initially be on historic debt.
ETC has launched a project to collect outstanding historical debt on the toll network, dating from December 3, 2013, to the end of August 2015.
Road users are offered a 60% discount to settle their debt for this period before May 1. They will be able to pay their debt over a sixmonth period.
“If you owe R1 000, you will need to pay R400 to get the R600 discount,” notes Ridgway.
“If you don’t pay the R400, it would become R1 000 on May 1.”
“This debt has been ringfenced and we are in the process of collecting it,” he adds.
He says ETC will not wait for May 1 to pursue those who have clearly indicated that they are not going to settle their accounts.
Just fewer than 520 000 account holders owe 83% of the historic debt, which is R5.2-billion.
One transport company owes R26-million, which is ETC’s biggest outstanding debt.
However, the average monthly historic toll debt is less than R90 a month, says Ridgway.
Already there has been some success with the historic debt drive, with five of ETC’s top ten debtors indicating that they will settle their bills, which vary between R5-million and R25-million.
It is a challenge to collect a “bubble of debt” that is two-and-a-half years old, admits Surkont, with the long wait to pursue debtors making “it more onerous than necessary”.
Ridgway hopes that another discount programme will not be implemented in future.
Surkont believes a second programme would create the sense among road users that “they can manage their noncompliance”.
He says continued nonpayment can impact on Sanral’s and government’s standing with ratings agencies, as well as on Sanral’s sustainability. Also, the debt will have to be recovered some way or the other, with the tax payer remaining the responsible party.
Surkont says indications are that government has decided that the ‘user pays’ principle is here to stay and that it will not turn back from the debt collection process, despite this being an election year.