SANRAL, the embattled company responsible for the etoll gantries erected on Gauteng highways, is being accused of lying over a statement made by spokesperson Vusi Mona that it hasn’t yet issued court summons to motorists over unpaid etolls. apparently sending motorists final demands and summonses via email in lieu of unpaid toll fees despite representatives saying they’re not.
This is according to Justice Project South Africa (JSPA), a motoring group that has been outspoken on the etolls issue.
JSPA picked up on a statement made by Mona to Human IPO regarding final demands and summons.
“SANRAL has not issued Final Demand invoices, however we have issued communication as final reminder of outstanding payment. We also have not requested any summons to be issued by the National Prosecuting Authority,” Mona said.
Contrary to Mona’s claims, the JSPA published emails sent to an unnamed business, sent from the SANRAL VPC (Violations Processing Centre) that specifically say “a letter of demand has been issued” and “a summons has been issued” in the matter of outstanding toll fees. The JSPA says the terminology implies that legal action has been taken, yet no summonses nor letters of demand have been received by the company in question.
JSPA is expecting SANRAL to deny the claims (SANRAL hasn’t responded to queries yet), so has gone to the trouble of providing evidence in the email headers that the letters of demand are genuine.
“The internet headers for both emails have been verified and confirm the emails as having originated from bulkmail.tmtservices.co.za and JPSA would not have put out its release on Tuesday 6 May 2014 if we had not verified the authenticity of the emails prior to doing so,” the organisation says.
According to the JPSA, SANRAL is thus using unlawful intimidation tactics to get toll users to pay their allegedly outstanding etoll bills.
The conclusion the JSPA reaches is that “the SANRAL VPC is lying to people in its emails” and “[SANRAL’s] head doesn’t appear to know what the tail is doing.”
