While bus service flounders, taxi drivers do as they like
THE abysmal delivery of the much touted and venerated Integrated Public Transport System (IPTS), a then envisaged world class, World Cup legacy project here in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality precinct, begs two questions:
Will the IPTS ever see the light of day? With the number of lawsuits and corruption allegations levelled against its supposed implementation champions, when will probes from national Treasury see the light of day?
The current national Treasury investigative workload, under current South African corruption trends, seems not to abate or be reduced down to a trickle by SIUs, Scorpions, Hawks or the SAPS proper. Instead corrupt practice prevails in every nook and cranny of economics, politics and corporate companies.
The snail-paced IPTS project is an albatross around this municipality's neck, with no end in sight, as timeframe goalposts are shifted at will, leaving those lining their pockets smiling all the way to the bank! On the other side of the coin taxi route operations around Korsten are in a shambles, with a false sense of working together prevailing.
The big guns instruct their drivers to do as they please on routes, causing a major loss of income to operators of old. They work against agreed bylaws the 10 associations themselves put in place and agreed to with the powers that be, specifically to curb violence on taxi routes, in and around long standing established taxi ranks.
For instance, no one is supposed to load or offload passengers within 300m of any established taxi rank. Yet this is done at will in Durban Road, Cottrell Street, Highfield Road and Stanford Road.
Many requests for intervention in this regard to the Santaco western region office, NMB council (Mhleli Tshamase), Department of Transport and the traffic department (Hamilton Totoyi) for intervention in and around the taxi rank sandwiched between Durban Road, Clair Street and Highfield Road just don't seem to see the light of day! Sweepers do as they please, loading and offloading passengers at will with impunity.
Commuters don't make things easier either as they are always looking for a free ride with unscrupulous drivers and guardtjies who refuse to drop off the commuters in the rank as always was the case! Taxi drivers opt to park in Durban Road in the street, constantly holding up normal traffic in this most busy area and load passengers over from incoming taxis into one taxi that waits to fill in the street behind parked cars in parking bays.
At Greenacres we as long- standing taxi operators are overridden by the bigger associations, with no recourse to the powers that be as to protection of our livelihoods. Against all odds we soldier on with ranks being opened on pavements across from Mercantile Hospital carting people to Walmer Fig Tree area while the Durban Road rank has such a facility and route.
That this is a recipe for disaster is an understatement, as it has the potential of igniting a taxi war in the Korsten area that will take us back to a bygone era. People can only take so much, especially if starvation beckons, underpinned by repossessions of tools of the trade and household goods.
This cannot be allowed to happen. The ball is in our court, let's get it through the goalposts with the IPTS in tow.
The alternative will set us back into the dark ages, giving the powers that be ammunition to abandon the taxi industry formalisation process and setting the 12-year governmental contract negotiations back into oblivion.
The pilot project has run its shabby course, the start-up phase seems wobbly at present and the 12-year government contract underpinning the IPTS remains a distant reality.
May common sense prevail, for many families' wellbeing rests on this IPTS's successful final implementation and conclusion!
Denzyl Harper, Korsten, Port Elizabeth
