Taxi fares set to rise later this month

Eastern Cape commuters must brace themselves for a hike in taxi fares – possibly this month.

This, as the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) announced that from Wednesday commuters would feel the pinch as they would have to fork out between R1 to R10 and R1 and R20 for local and long distances respectively.

However, taxi bosses in the province are yet to decide when the fare hike will kick in as different taxi ranks are yet to meet and decide how much to increase the fares by in their respective routes.

The fare increase has been inevitable because of the petrol price increases this year. And on Wednesday, DA leader Mmusi Maimane led opposition parties, religious leaders and the Freedom Movement on a march against the petrol levy outside national Treasury in Tshwane.

They demanded the Road Accident Fund and fuel levies by R1 per litre, which will take the price of petrol to below R15 a litre among other demands.

“It is grossly irresponsible and unfair for the national government to expect that poor and unemployed South Africans will continue to foot the bill for their wholesale mismanagement of the economy.

“Levies currently account for R5,30 of every litre of 95 octane petrol or R265 or every 50-litre of fuel which when one factors in the staggering mismanagement and systematic corruption at the RAF, is indefensible,” the memorandum read. Santaco Eastern Cape secretary general Vusumzi Mbewu said taxi fares in the province will only go up between later this month and September.

“The prices will be going up in some parts of the country from August 1 but we have not set a date yet for the Eastern Cape. It will happen in the next two months and as Santaco we do not increase prices,” he said.