Changing face of taxi industry

TAXI drivers want increased respect for their profession‚ comparable to airline pilots in whose hands the fate of many lives rests.

And those from the Ivory Park Taxi Association near Midrand say they have found a way to do it – by donning a shirt and tie.

“Taxi drivers are perceived to be violent people so this was done to prove that the taxi industry is also an occupation‚ a respectable occupation at that‚” taxi driver Linda Phiri‚ who was wearing a checked shirt‚ with his dreadlocks neatly tied back, said. “We want to be taken seriously.” Phiri said that just like pilots‚ the lives of scores of people rested in taxi drivers’ hands daily.

Mondays and Fridays at the taxi rank are shirt-and-tie days. Wednesdays are golf shirt days and on Tuesdays‚ Thursdays and weekends drivers are free to dress as they please.

Another taxi driver said he believed that drivers should undergo mental assessments and get therapy, in the same way that pilots do.

“Before pilots are given flight clearance‚ they undergo tests to ensure that they have no stress so that they fly people safely,” he said.

“If the same was done for us, perhaps it would decrease the number of accidents.”

But he admitted that if the tests were conducted‚ some drivers could be labelled unfit to drive.

“That cannot happen because the taxi industry has saved a lot of us,” he said.

“Some of us are ex-cons‚ fed up with crime and want to make an honest living. This is how we do it.”