Fuel price drops, taxi fares static
JOBURG – CASH-TRAPPED motorists breathed a sigh of relief when fuel prices plunged by 127 cents per litre – but taxi commuters cannot say the same thing as the National Taxi Association revealed there won’t be a reduction of taxi fares as some had hoped.
When contacted about the possible drop in taxi fares, the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) chief strategic manager Bafana Magagula said, “No, we cannot do that. Reduction of fuel prices is like a drop in the ocean in terms of our expenditures. For example a Kombi which was R280 000 a year ago, now is R340 000, so R1 reduction in petrol per litre doesn’t come any closer to covering that.”
Magagula said the organisation was already subsidising taxi fare prices without any help from government. “Look, we will continue subsidising our commuters, as in the past, other means of public transport are being subsidised by government but we are not. Our commuters are not being subsidised by government, we do it,” he said.
Magagula also revealed that last year their association appointed an economist to analyse their business and it was revealed that they were subsidising their commuters by up to 69 percent.
“The report stated that we are charging 69 percent less as to what we were supposed to charge. But we will continue to carry the costs on behalf of our passengers so as to keep our businesses running,” he said.
