The controversial e-tolls bill now goes back to the National Assembly after it was passed by the National Council of Provinces.
|||Cape Town - The e-tolls bill was passed by the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on Wednesday.
The Transport and Related Matters Amendment Bill was supported by the ANC and opposed by the DA and Cope.
The bill now goes back to the National Assembly.
Minister of Transport Dikobe Ben Martins said the bill was necessitated by the development of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project and was needed to implement the electronic tolling.
The bill aims to legalise the collecting of tolls, to allow the Cross Border Road Transport Agency to collect tolls as well as Sanral, and to allow different toll prices.
“Funding the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project through a user charge has enabled the upgrading of some 201km of roads that would otherwise have taken in excess of 12 years to fund,” said Martins.
“Without this project, traffic in the province would have been in gridlock by now.
“Members may be interested to note that the traffic volumes on the Gauteng freeways increased with between 27 percent to 42 percent for different freeway sections since 2006. On the N1 between the Allandale interchange and Buccleuch interchange, morning peak hour traffic increased from 9 000 vehicles in 2008 to 13 000 vehicles in 2013.
“An independent survey carried out by a company providing navigation services showed that the improvements have led to a 50 percent reduction in travel times on the N1 between Johannesburg and Tshwane in peak hours.”
DA MP Herman Groenewald said the bill would make the poor poorer.
“The government cannot just ignore millions of South Africans. Taxpayers, road users, vehicle owners, political parties, unions in the labour market and ANC members against tolling deserve public participation in all provinces. Even the churches, it appears, have spoken out against e-tolling,” he said.
“The DA cannot support a bill which will make poor South Africans poorer.”
Cope MP Dennis Bloem said the bill had been widely campaigned against by the majority of political parties, by civil society, religious organisations, business and Cosatu.
“It is very clear that this bill does not have the support of the majority of South Africans,” he said.
“This bill has split the ANC into two. I know people will deny this here, but this is a fact.”
On Tuesday, the bill was returned to an NCOP committee which had previously agreed to it.
“The chairperson of the National Council of Provinces referred concerns regarding the manner in which the first meeting was handled to the chair of the committee.
“The chair of the committee consulted widely and decided that it was best to reconvene the committee to deal with the bill,” said the committee chairman, ANC MP Pat Sibande.
He said the committee had rescinded its earlier report on the bill and reconsidered it.
louise.flanagan@inl.co.za
The Star