One bus carrying passengers has been set on fire as the seven-day South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) strike enters its second day in the Western Cape.
The operators of Golden Arrow Buses say that they’ve had to deviate from their schedule in order to cover as much area as possible in the province.
There have been reports of violence against the bus drivers.
Santaco is striking against the City of Cape Town’s impounding of its members’ taxis when they break by-laws.
Golden Arrow Services’ spokesperson Bronwen Dyke-Beyer says they’ve cut services to certain areas.
“We are operating as full a service as possible. Unfortunately we get many people saying ‘is my bus still going to be on time’ we’re not operating as per schedule, we’re basically trying to cover as many points as possible. We aim to keep running until we’ve assisted everybody, last night we were still running buses after midnight, and there were still people walking home, people who spent the night not able to get home. So, our aim is just to cover as many areas as possible, and to just keep going as long as possible. It’s very difficult operating conditions, we’ve had to move out of Khayelitsha, and we had to move out of Nyanga, which means that the people that live there have to walk a long distance.”
SANTACO strike leaves thousands of Cape Town taxi commuters stranded:
No new legislation
The City of Cape Town’s Member of the Mayoral Committee for Safety and Security JP Smith, has denied reports that they’ve introduced new legislation that has led to taxis being impounded when drivers break the law.
Smith says they don’t understand the rationale behind the strike.
“There is no new legislation. The legislation in terms of which public transport vehicles are impounded is the National Land Transportation Act; it’s national legislation. We’ve been doing it for two years, and it has been the subject of discussions among many other topics at the taxi task team. So, I don’t think anybody on the government side understands the approach suddenly taken by Santaco in relation to this.”
JP Smith weighs in on Santaco operations:
