Make safer taxis an election issue

TODAY we tell the story of nine survivors of taxi accidents in Nelson Mandela Bay. They are brave, resilient, strong people who suffered devastating injuries.

So far as the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) can tell – and they have been criticised many times for their statistics keeping – there were 564 fatal taxi crashes in 2012. The RMTC hasn’t started collating data for last year.

That means that most days of that year somewhere in South Africa two families lost loved ones, breadwinners and children in taxi accidents.

Yet there are no dedicated statistics to tell us how bad the injuries and the disabilities caused by taxi accidents are.

The RTMC only counts a crash once someone has died. If all survived it does not become a statistic.

When asked why they were not keeping statistics government agencies, including the Eastern Cape Department of Transport, play a ridiculous blame game saying it is the work of another body within government. So while all our politicians in their campaigns say they will deliver a government for the people, why do none of them make safer taxis an election issue?

Could it be that government would rather live in ignorance than find out the truth – as the truth might well mean that an extensive clampdown on the taxi industry is called for?

A cursory survey by the RTMC has pointed to the possibility that the Eastern Cape has some of the worst offending taxis in the country. Transport MEC Thandiswa Marawu herself admitted in her annual report last year that the public transport policing sector was “woefully” underfunded.

Yet nobody is counting the full cost of the disability grants, the loss of income, the devastation of families and the significant burden on the public insurer, the Road Accident Fund.

Is it not high time that we add our voice to those asking for the crisis of the people to be made the crisis of our politicians?