The government has already started working to identify combined solutions for the tolls – an exercise involving drivers, residents of the neighbourhoods where they are installed and the concessionaires – in order to resume payment of the tariffs, the Agência de Informação de Moçambique (AIM) reported.
Speaking in Maputo, at the usual press briefing after the end of the 4th ordinary session of the Council of Ministers, the spokesman for that body, Inocêncio Impissa, explained that contacts are already underway with those involved in the toll process in order to bring the parties closer together and ensure that they can live together harmoniously.
‘What’s happening now is a process of surveying the damage. It’s a question of understanding the players involved, in other words, who is behind the destruction of the tolls,’ he said.
The spokesman explained that, in many places, a considerable part of the people who destroy the tolls are disadvantaged local communities who don’t have cars.
‘They don’t pay tolls directly, but indirectly through public transport when they use it, but there are also hauliers, who are among the main players in this process,’ said the Minister of State Administration and Civil Service.
It’s been more than three months since motorists stopped paying tolls. Last January, the government announced the resumption of toll collection, especially on the Maputo-Matola and Moamba toll roads in Maputo province, both under the management of Trans African Concessions (TRAC).
However, the situation made the tolls the scene of violent protests between motorists and TRAC managers and residents in areas close to the infrastructures, who set up barricades on the road.
For this reason, the spokesman said that the populations surrounding the tolls should participate in protecting and safeguarding the infrastructure, especially in compensation and what the tolls economically produce, pointing out that TRAC’s concession period for tolls in Maputo province ends in the next two years, which implies that ‘these discussions will effectively determine what the investments needed to get the tolls working regularly mean.’
The source said that the problem affects all the existing tolls on the Maputo ring road, in the metropolitan region, namely the municipalities of Maputo, Matola, Marracuene and Boane, which belong to the Mozambique Road Network (REVIMO).
