SACP Gauteng Province welcomes the Report on the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project and E-Tolls

16 January 2015

The SACP Gauteng Province welcomes Premier David Makhura`s release of the report of the Advisory Panel on the Socio-economic Impact of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project and E-tolls.

In particular we welcome and appreciate the strong and decisive leadership by the provincial government in appointing the panel to conduct an assessment on the issues.

We believe this is a victory for the poor and working people in the province, considering the fact that e-tolls were presented as a fait accompli and as being non-negotiable and cast in stone.

The people of Gauteng can now celebrate the opportunity to engage on the best preferable alternative funding model and options for integrated, sustainable, efficient public transport system.

The SACP feels vindicated that the report reaffirms our historic position that the solution for public transport anomalies affecting the working class and poor cannot be found in narrow e-tolling approach but in an integrated, sustainable, safe, efficient and effective public transport system.

We believe that through the release of the report, we now have an opportunity to enter into a wider debate as opposed to parochial and mechanical debate on e-tolls.

Moving forward, the debate must be about provision of efficient, sustainable, affordable, safe and integrated public transport system.

As the SACP we particularly believe that the focus in this debate must include amongst others the provision of alternative forms of transport, specifically mass transport systems such as trains, buses and taxis that are safe, reliable and operates efficiently.

In this regard, Prasa should urgently prioritise Gauteng to make concentrated impact through the urgent roll out of the new fleet of coaches.

We call on government to urgently review the current arrangements in respect to ownership, overall operational model, pricing and safety issues with the Putco bus company.

We also call for urgent improvement of the taxi industry to ensure that the permitting process is finalised and that these permits are issued. Such a process should seek to achieve the ideals of the taxi recapitalisation program.

We call for the increased use of public trains and the reduction in the use of road transport with respect to freight and goods.

We also call on Sanral to build better, efficient alternative road networks beyond the freeways.

We further believe that these set of issues will contribute to greater integration of the transport system and solutions to the problems of Gauteng public transport.

The release of the report marks an important turning point against extremism, on the one hand the call for complete scrapping of e-tolls and the call for e-tolling as a fait accompli, on the other.

Our view is that both extremes do not come anywhere close to addressing the plight of the overwhelming majority of workers in particular and the working class in general on public transport.

In this regard the overwhelming majority of our people and workers will still be cramped and squeezed in existing modes of transport such as trains, buses and taxis which are unreliable, unsafe, inefficient and can be life threatening.

The SACP is content that the report deals a heavy blow to these two extremes which are based on a narrow, mechanical approach and we now have an opportunity for a strategic debate.

Issued on behalf of the SACP Gauteng Province

Contact:

Jacob Mamabolo: Provincial Secretary: 082 884 1868
Lucian Segami: Provincial Spokesperson: 079 522 0098
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