Taxi council is steers festive season road safety operations
JOBURG - The South African National Taxi Council has committed to ensuring safety on the roads this festive season by supporting law enforcement agencies’ operations and ensuring compliance among its members.
“We don’t want to see any fatalities this year; we want to see people travel safely and come back alive,” the council’s Johannesburg operations manager David Murogolo said.
According to Murogolo, the council is urging its members not to drink and drive, and advocated the arrests of drunken taxi drivers.
However, he said the arrests of unfit taxi drivers should not come at the expense of taxi owners.
“If you find one of our drivers drunk, you can impound the car but don’t take the car away. Give the car to the owner and put that guy in jail until next year so that he will learn a lesson.”
The council will conduct independent roadside operations to monitor its drivers by stopping drivers to check their fitness to drive. Furthermore, it will perform tests to determine drivers’ alcohol and drug levels as well as inspecting vehicles to ensure that they are roadworthy and have proper documentation.
The council is also setting up stop and go’s for its drivers to rest before continuing their journeys.
Queue marshals at taxi ranks are being told not to load unroadworthy vehicles and to perform checks to ensure that the vehicle is licensed, and the driver has a valid driver’s licence and public drivers permit, Murogolo said.
However, he said the onus of ensuring that unroadworthy vehicles did not end up on the roads also rested with commuters.
“Commuter must not agree to get into a vehicle which is unroadworthy, especially for long distance trips. They must make sure that the vehicle is equipped to take them and bring them back safely,” he said.
