‘Owners fail to help us enforce the rules’ LOTA’s Solly Vilane

The chairperson of the Local Taxi Association (LOTA) in eMalahleni has shed light on the two horror taxi accidents which happened over the weekend claiming a total of three lives and causing multiple injuries.

Mr Solly Vilane told WITBANK NEWS that as an association they have multiple safety induction training procedures for taxi owners and drivers who commute eMalahleni’s residents.

Speaking in light of the two accidents which happened during the weekend of May 3, Vilane said every taxi goes through thorough inspection before it is approved to transport passengers.

“A taxi has to prove to us that it is road worthy, in physically good condition and meets the specifications of the number of passengers that it is certified to carry,” he said.

Vilane however did concede that they only do this inspection once in the beginning of the taxi’s cycle with the association,

“after that we leave it to the hands of traffic offers as a taxi has to go for road worthy tests every year.”

This pedigree to ensure passenger safety is followed by induction training for drivers who deal with passengers on a daily basis.

Vilane explained that the induction process is facilitated by a training officer who teaches drivers all about passenger etiquette.

A common problem that the association faces is the lack of commitment by drivers to their work.

“A challenge we have is that the guys who are taxi drivers do not enter the profession wholeheartedly, they do the job while waiting for something better,” Vilane noted.

When drivers do find greener pastures, they leave the job and taxi owners have to find replacements abruptly.

“Now you find that the owner replaces the driver with someone who has not gone through proper training procedures,” that is the challenge Vilane said they are faced with, “Owners fail to help us enforce the rules.”

“Some accidents are just that, accidents, but now sometimes you find that the driver who was driving the taxi during the accident is not on our records of drivers that we have,” he added.

On the merits of the actual accidents the association did not want to comment but said they have launched their own investigation to find out what happened.

Vehicle testing officer, Mr Pieter Struwig, from Witbank’s testing station said every minibus taxi is subjected to a number of tests before being declared road worthy.

The series of tests check the inside, outside and underneath state of the taxi.

These extensive tests see multiple taxi’s which fail the test,

“You’ll find that on a day where we’ll test 10 taxis, four of them will be failed because they do not comply with the requirements,” he said.

Struwig also noted that the biggest negligence which they see often comes from the taxi drivers and not the owners,

“Many taxi owners do a good job in keeping their cars in good condition, however it’s a different story with the younger guys.”