E-tolls will kill us: Shop owner
E-tolls will kill small business in Gauteng, Tembisa businessman Sizwesonke Ncgobo said on Monday.
E-tolls will kill small business in Gauteng, Tembisa businessman Sizwesonke Ncgobo said on Monday.
"[E-tolls] can damage [business] like hell. When we travel around Gauteng, if you count the number of tolls from Centurion to Jukskei, [I pass] about four and I travel on that road about four times a day."
Ncgobo has been a small business owner for 16 years and owns four metered taxis and a mini grocery store in Vusimusi, Tembisa.
He has already registered his four cars, but said an alternative solution should have been considered.
The government should rather increase the driving licence fees for motorists and use the extra charge to pay for the roads, "rather than making people pay every month by a certain time", Ncgobo said.
He was speaking to reporters during a visit by the Democratic Alliance to Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg.
DA MP Ian Ollis and Gauteng premier candidate Mmusi Maimane were in Tembisa to get an indication how small business owners would be affected by e-tolls in Gauteng.
Maimane said: "Tembisa is exactly as you see it around you, poor and unemployed.
"Tolling will mean entrepreneurs choose between paying tolls and employing people, when we are at the stage where we need to be creating employment."
-Sapa