The Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) has revealed that it intends to use claims against the Road Accident Fund (RAF) to pay off its e-toll debt.
This comes as the province scrambles to find ways to finance the nearly R20-billion burden it has chosen to take on after e-tolls were shut down in April, while attempting to avoid compromising funding to important sectors such as health and education.
Other methods mooted thus far include an expansion to the Gautrain as well as outright loans from “financial institutions.”
The GPG on 1 October announced that it made its first payment of R3.8 billion to National Treasury to settle its e-toll arrears, with four equal annual instalments to follow.
In total, the province is on the hook for R12.9 billion in e-toll debt, R4.1 billion in road maintenance, and around R3 billion in interest obligations.
R10 billion in the pot
Gauteng MEC for Finance and Economic Development, Lebogang Maile, told MoneyWeb that the RAF provides one potential avenue through which the GPG could pay off its debts.
The RAF functions as an organ of the state that compensates victims or families of victims of accidents on the country’s roads. It is funded by a bespoke levy on fuels of R2.18 per litre which brought in around R48 billion in the 2023/24 financial year.
Maile explained that when a motorist or pedestrian is injured on Gauteng roads and is treated at a public hospital within the province, it is the provincial government that flips the bill on the individual’s treatment and the RAF must then reimburse the province for these expenses.
However, the GPG has not claimed all that is owed to it as it does not have the right systems in place to do so.
“For the longest time, we have not been collecting that money the way we are supposed to because we’ve not had the proper systems,” said Maile.
“It’s what I call a leakage. We use money and we are supposed to be [re]paid and we don’t get paid.”
There have also been instances where road users from other provinces were brought into Gauteng for emergency medical treatments, which again cost the province a significant sum.
As a result, there are about R10 billion in unclaimed medical expenses still to be repaid to the GPG by the RAF, which is enough to cover around half of the province’s total e-toll obligations.
“The RAF has said to us, ‘It’s not our problem. You must claim what is rightfully yours but must prove it’,” said Maile.
“That is why we must have systems and it’s not their problem. It’s our problem. That is why we are fixing it.”
The ball is already rolling in this regard.
RAF Head of Corporate Communications, McIntosh Polela, confirmed that the RAF and GPG regularly engage on the matter of outstanding payments and that the latter has started the process of reclaiming what it is entitled to.
Furthermore, Polela said it will have no adverse impact on the RAF to pay out the R10 billion to the GPG as it is a “commitment to the provincial government, driven by existing legislation.”
“The fund will continue to pay [damages to road accident victims] as it has always done over the years,” he concluded.
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