Highway Robbery


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Public was threatened with being black listed or arrested for non payments and that didn't work.

A little over 7 years ago the Johannesburg public were introduced to another Government money making scheme that understandably didn't go down too well. I have no issue in paying for new services if I want to use them like a new toll road between A and B as it will most likely be a shorter more direct route saving you time and money.

This wasn't the case in this underhanded scenario as the plan that was hatched between the SA Government and Kapsch Traffic an Austrian Etoll specialist company. What they did was erect E Toll gantries around Johannesburg on motor ways that had been there for years. As you can imagine these roads were paid with and maintained by the road tax we all pay when we buy our yearly licence discs.

It was then reported 70 percent of the money was going into the Kapsch coffers for maintaining the roads and supplying the payment systems. Over 90 percent of road users refused to pay and received monthly statements which went straight into the bin. I haven't seen one for a few years, but the last time I saw a bill it was in the region of $7000 that I apparently owed. Three years ago they offered everyone a 50% off deal to those that hadn't paid in a last hurrah effort to see if that would work.

The reason for this post is the Government is looking more and more likely to give in and scrap the idea. The financial year end is at the end of this month with the Johannesburg Transport Minister asking for the Toll gantries to be removed.


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More like 95% fail as no one except car hire companies paid as it was built into costs. Who knows maybe they kept that as profit. I know a friend of mine did just that with his trucking company and made millions extra.

Two counts of bribery and corruption have been thrown at Kapsch Traffic along with their Electronic Toll Collection company called ETC. Firstly when a foreign company comes in to handle your roads questions of dodgy deals are certainly going to be raised and this was just too obvious. Payments made by ETC to another account for no services offered was a huge red flag and these payments lasted for 3 years. The second incident recently surfaced when Kapsch again was caught out sending a $ 5 million bribe to Zambian officials also for gaining an E toll contract in Zambia.

When you piss off a country you had better be squeaky clean as dirt will be found and will also never be forgotten. I just can't believe that this company has managed to fester itself in 50 countries around the world on the basis it supplies some type of service. More like the service of paying off officials to obtain these contracts.

This is where I hope the use of blockchain comes to the fore as everything is transparent showing these companies what they are truly about. I am happy their dirty deal never worked out here and still believe they were paid for something that should never have happened. This is pure common sense as they never built any new roads and the deal was too shady to hide.

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