JPSA asks for Sanral spokesperson’s head on a platter
Vusi Mona insults public.
Sanral once again has displayed its blatant disdain for the public and it’s opinion and will.
On the evening of Wednesday 15 January South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) spokesperson, Vusi Mona, responded to a question asked by a Radio 702 and Cape Talk listener in a highly questionable fashion.
The listener had posed the question (paraphrased) “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?” in reference to the SMS messages being sent out demanding e-toll payments.
His response was, “Very easy. Raise your IQ a little bit”.
Chairperson of Justice Project South Africa (JPSA) Howard Dembovsky responded to the incident with the following.
“As a public servant and an employee of a state owned enterprise, 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.
“At no time during the course of his interview with Gushwell Brooks did Mona apologise for his utterance. Instead, he tried to justify it by saying that people should “exercise common sense”.
“We are reliably informed that this is not the first time that Mona has alluded to “low IQs” when speaking to journalists about the e-tolls debate, however this is the first time that we have heard him state as much on public radio, first hand.
“Justice Project South Africa hereby calls upon Mona to do the honourable thing and resign immediately, failing which for the Minister of Transport to dismiss him since he clearly has no respect for the public he is supposed to serve – not hurl insults at,” demanded Dembovsky
Readers can go to https://soundcloud.com/howard-dembovsky/vusi-mona-tells-dianna-who to listen to a sound clip of the incident.
