Sanral has no objection to inquiry
With sufficient wide mandate
THE SA NATIONAL Roads Agency (Sanral) does not have any objections to an independent inquiry into road construction costs and would welcome the opportunity to participate in such an inquiry and state its case.
But Vusi Mona, the head of communications at Sanral, said such an inquiry should have a sufficiently wide mandate to also investigate the manipulation of figures by critics of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) project, the credentials and experience of “experts” and the role of pressure groups to disseminate “alternative facts” to the media.
Sanral was responding to the deeper report into road construction costs in South Africa released on Monday by the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa).
Mona labelled Outa’s new report a “rehash” of the organisation’s earlier research report on the GFIP.
Wayne Duvenage, the chairperson of the organisation, said on Monday that even if Outa’s calculations were out by about 20 percent, the cost of the GFIP would have increased to about R12 billion compared to the excessive R18bn Sanral paid.
Duvenage added that if the GFIP had been built for about R10bn, the decision on electronic tolling could never have happened.
‘We remain of the view that the tender process was sound and there was no corruption’
However, Mona said Outa was again comparing projects that were incomparable and compounded this basic error by generalising about complex engineering projects.
Mona stressed the premise that there was a single or specific unit cost for road construction was a fiction, with the costs differing widely depending on a multitude of factors.
Outa benchmarked the cost of six projects in the overall GFIP project with other international projects, including projects in Ethiopia, the US, Western Europe and Greece.
Duvenage said all of these project cost less on a cost-asquare-metre basis than the GFIP and every one of these projects was more complex and involved new roads compared to the GFIP.
Mona refuted Outa’s allegations it was not given access to the information they were seeking about the GFIP.
Sanral subscribed to the Promotion of Access to Information Act and through a letter had informed the organisation in July last year it would be given full access to this information but to date it had not taken up this offer, Mona said.
Collusion He said Outa’s claim that Sanral had not done anything about the collusion by construction companies was “patently false” because to the best knowledge of the agency it was the only government entity that had followed up this matter with both civil and criminal action.
“We remain of the view that the tender process was sound and there was no corruption from Sanral’s side – the tender process had integrity. We were the victims of a crime and therefore reported the matter to the SAPS, where a statement was made,” he said.
Mona stressed it was important for Sanral to move forward with road expansion in Gauteng to prevent debilitating congestion in the near future. It wanted to engage with provincial and municipal infrastructure and also with Outa and the Automobile Association. He said Sanral noted and welcomed Outa’s pronouncement that it had “no desire to see the demise of Sanral”.
“The adversarial relationship that has to date existed does not help anyone. We would rather our relationship with Outa and other civil society organisations were less adversarial and more about how to deliver road infrastructure to South Africans,” he said.
Mona rejected the call for the scrapping of the e-toll scheme, stressing this would mean Sanral would not be able to meet its financial obligations and may be liquidated.