No taxis for 2 days: Commuters warned of citywide shutdown
No go: City taxis will be parked
Commuters can expect chaos on the road next week when the Western Cape taxi industry plans to shut down.
The industry on Wednesday warned commuters that they will not be operating on Monday and Tuesday in protest of the Blue Dot project being canned.
Santaco met with seven regions from the province where they decided to park their vans, after the Department of Mobility put the brakes on the initiative.
The pilot project’s well – which the government has poured millions into – has run dry, according to MEC Daylin Mitchell.
Through the project, taxi drivers were awarded monetarily for delivering a good service.
Santaco chairperson Mandla Hermanus says there were three main reasons for the shutdown, including the Blue Dot project and “bias by-laws”.
According to him, the City’s traffic by-laws are aimed at criminalising the taxi industry.
“They even use the industry and drag racing in the same sentence,” Hermanus says.
“There are hundreds of taxis which were impounded by the City, we would like the by-laws reviewed.
“The Blue Dot pilot project, we want it to be expanded, not just extended, we want everyone in every region to benefit from it. And we also want the industry to be subsidised.”
He says although they understand that Mitchell is trying his best to bring back the project, the shut down is the “best way” to deal with the rest of their grievances.
“We want the Treasury to move around funds like they did in the beginning of the project.
“This was not budgeted for but they managed to make things happen and that is what we want now,” Hermanus adds.
The meeting was attended by hundreds of taxi bosses from Two Oceans, Boland, Northern Region, Greater Cape, Codeta, Cata and Mitchells Plain.
They all unanimously agreed that no one will operate on Monday or Tuesday.
Sharief Edwards from Mitchells Plain asked about public safety: “Can we guarantee that there will be no violence on those two days?”
To which Hermanus replied that he couldn’t guarantee that drivers won’t do anything outside the mandate.
“We are asking drivers and owners to leave their cars either at the taxi rank or park in their homes. We think this would ensure that there will not be any trouble.”
Hermanus concedes that the shutdown would be cancelled if government came to the party.
“We could stop the shutdown if someone reaches out to us. We have been trying to engage with the government but they ignored us.”