SA Taxi donates patrol vehicles to minibus taxi industry
SA Taxi donates patrol vehicles to minibus taxi industry
Over R20 million initiatives provides resources for taxi associations to entrench road safety, reduce conflict, and boost self regulation
SA Taxi, a pioneering business platform focused on transforming the minibus taxi industry, has completed the handover of passenger vehicles to be used as patrol vehicles by regional, provincial, and national taxi associations along with the Cross Border Transport Organisation.
Planned in collaboration with the South African National Taxi Council (SANTACO) and the National Taxi Alliance (NTA), the initiative is aimed at strengthening the industry’s right and ability to self-regulate through improved safety on the roads, reduction of conflict among taxi operators, and reduction of friction between the industry and law enforcement agencies.
The hand over of individual vehicles during the past six months has been timed to coincide with the completion by associations and related bodies of their elections for executive members. Each new executive team now has the means, via the patrol vehicles, to ensure that road usage by member operators is more effectively monitored and that resulting feedback can be used to support constructive change by operators.
Branded by SA Taxi for each association, the patrol vehicles will also play a visible role in road safety campaigns in which the industry and SA Taxi will partner with government agencies such as the Road Traffic Management Corporation, which is tasked with eliminating fragmentation across government departments of the responsibilities for road traffic management.
“Everything we do at SA Taxi is designed to help professionalise and formalise the industry in order to make it sustainable,” says SA Taxi Communications Executive, Maroba Maduma.
“In this particular initiative, we’re focused on capacitation in relation to safety. We’ve removed for taxi associations the vehicle costs involved in patrolling and monitoring their members’ activities.
“They can now focus on developing and deploying the necessary skills to not only make such patrols and monitoring more effective but to evolve progressively better processes and methodologies for regulating the industry.
“Our vehicle donations therefore contribute to the ability of associations to engender respect from their members, the public, and law enforcement, raising levels of responsibility and accountability among all concerned.
“And, by increasing levels of road safety, the knock-on effect of the donations is to make taxi operations more sustainable and, thereby, contribute to enterprise development.”
Maroba Maduma
+27 (0) 11 592 8738
Group Communications Executive
SA Taxi Communications