The deputy chairperson for the South African National Taxi Council (SANTACO) in Alfred Nzo Region, Simphiwe Gxumayo, confirmed that they had decided to embark on a protest demanding their payments from the Department of Transport.
According to him, the department is failing to make their payments for scholar transport in time. He said they are not paid for some months, but when the department decide to pay them, it pays for only one month.
“When the Scholar Transport was started, a litre of petrol was costing R12; now it’s more than that but the department is sitting in one place,” said Gxumayo.
He added that they requested the payments for vehicles that are travelling on gravel roads should not be the same payment that is received by vehicles travelling on tar roads, but that does also not happen. Gxumayo said that some of them no longer have taxis because they were repossessed as they could not afford to pay for them.
“If they do not give us our money, learners will walk long distances when going to school because we are not going to transport them. Some of the workers did not go to work due to our protest.”
The Spokesperson for the Department of Transport, Unathi Binqose, confirmed that some of the roads were closed in the Eastern Cape due to protests associated with taxi associations. Affected roads are P612 in Matatiele towards Maluti at Khoapa location road, N2 Mt Ayliff at Puthi towards Mt Frere and in the protest action road trucks were used to close the road, R56 in Mt Fletcher towards Matatiele Kokstad, R61 Cofimvaba near Qamata towards Queenstown, and R61 Cofimvaba near the junction towards Ngcobo was also closed.
“There were two districts that were affected by protest action, the Alfred Nzo and Chris Hani Districts; all other districts were very quiet,” said Binqose.
He confirmed to Express that the protest was not about unavailability of funds; many operators with legitimate claims have been paid; it is only those with questionable claims that have not been paid. Provincial co-ordinator for the South African National Taxi Council (SANTACO B), Gabs Mtshala, confirmed that members of SANTACO B did not take part in this provincial shutdown as they were not aware of the reasons for such action, neither was the part of the meeting that took such a decision.
“We therefore called upon our constituency and members to continue with business as usual. We will always take such a decision through our normal engagement processes with you. We cannot own and inherit something we do not know,” said Mtshala.
