The SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) was in effect offering goods without the price being properly communicated to the public, the Freedom Front Plus said on Monday.
FF+ transport spokesman Anton Alberts said this contravened section 23(3) of the Consumer Protection Act, which stipulated that goods and services could not be offered for sale without a price being available.
"Sanral has not published all the tariffs for the toll roads. It is not available in any literature or Sanral's road boards," he said.
Alberts said there was a tariff calculator on Sanral's website, but most road users did not necessarily have access to the internet.
Sanral's service centre had e-tag tariffs available for only ordinary passenger vehicles and referred people to the website.
The tariff per class of vehicle was also not explicitly set out.
The FF+ intended meeting with national consumer commissioner Mamodupi Mohlala to bring this to her attention.
This was the second complaint to the commission about Sanral following one lodged by the Democratic Alliance last week.
Alberts said the prosecution of road users refusing to pay toll fees on the Gauteng toll gate project would probably be impractical and illegal.
"The number of the notices which have to be sent out will be astronomical due to the high volumes of vehicles which make use of the highways every day," he said.
"In terms of section 30 of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act, or Aarto, all notices have to be delivered by hand or by registered post."
The costs and pressure on the postal system to send out hundreds of thousands of notices would be "enormous".
Using the Criminal Procedure Act instead was also problematic, Alberts said. There was no clarity which criminal offence a road user would have committed for refusing to pay toll fees.
This type of non-payment was not clearly defined as an offence and Sanral would probably have to rely on the common law offences, but there was even uncertainty as to which offence would be relevant, said Alberts.
There was also no legal certainty on whether non-payment of toll fees would qualify as theft or fraud.
Existing legislation, such as the Road Traffic Act, would have to be amended and the Gauteng toll system could be delayed further, Alberts said.
"This state of affairs serves only as more proof that the implementation of the toll system was never considered properly."
The FF+ recommended cancelling the toll system and using the existing structure for traffic monitoring and management.
Meanwhile, the DA said that if reports that Sanral had held a roadblock in Johannesburg on Sunday to force motorists to buy e-tags were true, it had acted illegally and out of desperation.
"It is illegal for Sanral to set up roadblocks, as only policing bodies with the approval of the provincial commissioner can do so," transport spokesman Neil Campbell said.
There was no law that required the public to buy e-tags. They had the option of buying an e-tag or paying electronically within seven days of using a toll gate, he said.
The DA's complaint to the Consumer Commission last week included that motorists had to allow for deductions from their bank accounts for unknown amounts related to the tolling.
Johannesburg metro police spokesman Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said the city's police had nothing to do with the roadblock.
By Monday afternoon, he had not been able to confirm that there was indeed a roadblock, as reported, on Malibongwe Drive in Randburg, and in Linksfield.
On January 13, Sanral said the planned implementation of e-tolling in Gauteng next month had been postponed to address public concerns. There had been widespread criticism of the tolls, meant to pay for upgrades on Gauteng's ring roads.
Comment from Sanral was not immediately available.
Source: Sapa via I-Net Bridge
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