A recent study by the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) has shown that the service quality of the South African National Roads Agency Limited’s (Sanral’s) e-toll system was mostly poor regardless of the level of interaction or the user’s willingness to pay.

Sacci CEO Neren Rau on Tuesday said the survey, with more than 6 600 respondents, had also shown that a sizeable portion of road users would remain opposed to the e-toll system and continue to ignore collection efforts out of frustration with poor service delivery and as a matter of principle.

Rau pointed out that the majority of respondents, or 80.5%, indicated that the level of service for the e-toll administration was “very poor”, followed by 12.2% who indicated the service was “poor”.

A narrow margin of 6.1% indicated that the level of service was “neutral”, followed by 0.8%, indicating that the service was “good” and 0.3% that said it was “very good”.

Further, a selection of the most frequently used phrases in the comments section of the survey indicated that tax protest had taken root, Rau noted.

The phrase “not pay” appeared 585 times, or in 17.2% of the open-ended comments, “never pay” appeared 192 times, or in 5.7% of the comments, and “refuse to pay” appeared 72 times.

“Judging by the growing resentment against e-tolls, even among more sympathetic groups, it is unlikely that Sanral will stop a large portion of registered or billed users from eventually joining the ranks of the tax protest,” Rau added.

He also noted that administrative problems seemed endemic to the e-toll system given that problems were persisting despite the significant time and resources already having been allocated to the system.

“The Sacci position remains that a fuel levy is a more efficient mechanism to fund road infrastructure expansion and maintenance,” Rau said.

Sacci had submitted a detailed report on this survey to the e-toll review panel and would also be conducting a second major survey on the eight major concerns about the e-toll system that impacted on investor confidence.

The results of this second survey would be presented to President Jacob Zuma ahead of the Sacci Annual Convention, which was scheduled to take place next month.