No news not good news in e-toll silence

It seems like only yesterday we counted down the seconds to 2020 and here we are in February already. Speaking of which, government only has 11 months left to inform us of its final decision on e-tolls going on government’s mid-December promise that the matter will be finalised in 2020.

And if you take into consideration that December is holiday season, various overseas trips lined for the rest of the year and getting rid of their annual leave, government officials probably don’t have too much time left to entertain the bruised and battered tax payer with the inevitable bad news they’ll dish out.

Somehow phrases like ‘’silence is golden’’ and ‘’no news is good news’’ do not seem to be accurate in our anticipation of the e-toll outcome. Especially if you take the Democratic Alliance (DA) to heart.

“Gauteng residents cannot be fooled by these delay tactics that have a huge impact on their pockets,” the DA weighed in on the matter last month.

The party said the ANC government “can no longer be trusted in handling the e-toll matter as they seem to be unable to come to an agreement among themselves’’.

“Various leaders in the ANC and in government have made conflicting statements and promises yet nothing has materialised. This indecisiveness has resulted in the extension of the e-toll contract, which expired at the start of December last year, for another three months. This government has missed yet another opportunity to scrap e-tolls because it is unable to come up with a tangible solution.’’

And while the Minister of Transport has been very vocal in January over the slight decrease in the death toll on our roads over the festive period and even the arrest of the alleged speedster who posted a video of himself clocking 309km/h on the N1 in Midrand, Fikile Mbalula has been mum as far as e-tolls go.

Even if we hear nothing in the next three weeks, it’s hard to imagine Finance Minister Tito Mboweni sidestepping the issue at the National Budget Speech on 26 February. Mboweni has been unwavering in his support for the e-toll system even when a few others within the ruling party made contradictory noises.

Hopefully by the time we finally get the news, it’s not a case of wishing we’d rather still wait for the outcome by not paying for a few more years.