Vusi Mona, spokesman for roads agency Sanral, should resign, Justice Project South Africa (JPSA) said on Thursday.
“JPSA calls upon Vusi Mona to do the honourable thing and resign immediately, failing which, the minister of transport should dismiss him, since he clearly has no respect for the public he is supposed to serve,” said JPSA chairman Howard Dembovsky.
Dembovsky accused Mona of disrespecting a listener on Talk Radio 702 and Cape Talk on Wednesday night.
Dembovsky said the listener was asking about the SMS sent by Sanral asking motorists to pay money they owed.
He said the listener asked: “How do I, as a road user, know that I’m not being scammed, because there’s a lot of people who will jump on the bandwagon and try to scam you? How do you guarantee that these SMSes are genuine and not scams?”
Dembovsky said Mona’s response was to say: “Very easy. Raise your IQ a little bit.”
“As a public servant and an employee of a state-owned enterprise, Mr Mona has a duty to demonstrate respect for members of the public, and he should know better than to openly and blatantly insult a member of the public who was simply asking a legitimate question of him,” said Dembovsky.
Mona said Dembovsky was angry at e-tolls and Sanral.
“He wants to make this a personal issue. He wants to divert attention away from how they misled the public by encouraging them not to obtain e-tags and now people are faced with alternate user tariffs which are three times higher,” he said.
Dembovsky wanted to deflect attention away from his irresponsible remarks, Mona said.
He had told listeners to raise their IQ a little bit and call Sanral if they suspected they were being scammed.
Mona said that if the listener felt offended he would apologise. — Sapa
