Pretoria – Transport Minister Dipuo Peters has condemned the use of violence in the taxi industry to resolve disputes.
“I therefore call upon the industry to take a stance and expose those few individuals inclined on derailing the country from a good course of providing an affordable, reliable, accessible, safe and sustainable taxi industry,” Minister Peters said.
Speaking at the launch of the National Taxi Industry Awards, on Tuesday, she said taxi industry operators should participate in the municipal planning forums and be able to contribute to the city or town’s transport plan to avoid fighting over routes especially, lucrative ones.
Minister Peters said government had introduced the Taxi Recapitalisation Programme to improve safety for commuters.
“To date we have scrapped more than 65 000 old taxi vehicles and paid out over R3.8 billion scrapping allowances.
“Furthermore, we did not just pay scrapping allowance but we continued with government’s pronouncement for the taxi industry to participate in the main stream public transport and compete for public transport contracts in the form of tendering rather than for competing or fighting for passengers on the roads,” the Minister said.
According to the latest National Household Travel Survey, the taxi industry contributes approximately R40 billion to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The statistics also show that the taxi industry transports approximately 15 million commuters per day.
Minister Peters said the predominantly black, township-owned industry is a source of income to many families and is an employment creator.
She encouraged the industry to continue to observe and implement labour relation stipulations of employees in the sector. – SAnews.gov.za
