Taxi drivers continue to park in the wrong area

MBOMBELA – Some taxi drivers still continue to park their vehicles in undesignated areas for longer than 60 minutes at a time at the Nelspruit Plaza.

Mpumalanga News received numerous complaints from motorists as they allegedly accused these drivers of using public parking spaces as their own taxi ranks.

One of the complainants, Mr Ndumiso Mpongose said, “What they are doing is not fair.

They are parking their taxis in the wrong area and when you want to drop off someone or buy something in nearby stores, you struggle to get parking.

Sometimes you are forced to park as far as the police station and then walk to the Plaza.”
The drivers are also accused of causing traffic jams as they think nothing of it to make U-turns across the road.

This newspaper also learnt that this is nothing new because last year over the festive season, motorists experienced the same problem.

Read: Top Star calls on harassed motorists to come forward

Some of them went even further and accused the traffic officers of Mbombela Local Municipality (MLM) of failing to uphold justice in terms of monitoring the taxi drivers whether they disrespected the road rules.

“Traffic officers used to work around this area, but they don’t bother, even when there is a traffic jam caused by a taxi that is dropping off passengers in the middle of the road. They only focus on speeding cars and other offences.

“When it comes to the taxi drivers, they just turn a blind eye. They are so reluctant when it comes to monitoring the behaviour of these drivers because the whole area now seems to be a taxi rank,” he said and added that this negligence could cause accidents.

This publication contacted the spokesperson for MLM, Mr Joseph Ngala, but efforts proved fruitless at the time of going to print.