The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) has welcomed the announcement by the Credit Bureaus Association (CBA) that motorists indebted for not paying their e-toll bills will not be blacklisted. And that those already blacklisted will be taken off the listing.
The Electronic Toll Collection has approached the courts to apply for close to 2000 default judgments against people who have failed to pay their e-toll fees and have ignored court summons to settle their bills.
OUTA has questioned why these default judgments were being obtained against motorists while there was a pending challenge to the lawfulness of e-tolls.
Sugan Govender from Centurion is one of the motorists who were hit by a R60 000 summon for failure to pay for e-tolls on his three cars.
“The sheriff of the court came to serve me a summon. They gave us 10 days to respond. If we did not respond on time then they will come and attach goods.”
He says at first they tried to pay, but there would be glitches within the e-toll accounts collections department.
On the other hand there’s been statements made by politicians and other organisations that e-tolls will not be paid.
“I tried to be a law abiding citizen and tried to pay my dues. But in the few instances where we wanted to go and pay our e-toll accounts. The systems were offline and there would be long queues, and there was always one thing or the other. So as a result we said this thing does not work anymore.”
Govender has since approached OUTA for help.
OUTA’s Wayne Duvanage says they are currently sitting with about 1800 cases for motorists who asked to be represented.
Duvanage says they welcome the Credit Bureaus Association’s announcement but those who received summons should not fold their hands.
“What we have learned is that the CBA have indicated that they will not be blacklisting default judgements from SANRAL or ETC on e-toll related matters. This is very good news for the public. But what we do say to the public is that if you do find that there was a default judgement you need to get that rescinded and if you do get a summon, you need to not ignore them. You need to act on those as quickly as you can.”
The African National Congress in Gauteng has also come out to dismiss that motorists will be blacklisted over unpaid e-toll bills.
Related video click below:
