Academy proposed for taxi industry
THE Gauteng taxi industry is set to get an academy to educate its leadership about customer care and road safety, as a first step to end the recent spate of violence.
Roads and transport MEC Jacob Mamabolo revealed the plans when he made his submission before the Commission of Inquiry into Taxi Violence yesterday in Parktown, Joburg.
Mamabolo said this was one of the resolutions they came up with at a provincial taxi summit in July.
The summit was to, among other discussions, reflect, review and track the implementation of the resolutions that have been adopted at the previous summits.
“We have realised that education was the first step for the taxi industry leadership to participate meaningfully in broadening the role of the industry in the economy.
“The history of education and its negative impact is vividly expressed in the taxi industry, therefore the academy would be the great intervention to transform the industry,” said Mamabolo.
The MEC said he hoped the academy would end the violence, because the members of the industry would no longer narrowly focus on revenues and the income of households.
It will revolutionise, by designing and honing skills that will professionalise and realise opportunities within the industry.
“We are in discussions with the relevant departments. We have already approached tertiary institutions in the province to design courses and programmes for the academy,” said Mamabolo.
Some programmes will include road safety and customer care.
“With these programmes we will emphasise issues of respect and treatment of women, children and the elderly and people with disabilities.
“The national Department of Defence has also come on board to say they have massive capacity to help us deal with these problems of getting taxi drivers on better driving and road safety programmes,” said Mamabolo.
The commission, chaired by Justice Jeremiah Shongwe, was set up by Gauteng Premier David Makhura in September to investigate the underlying causes and people behind the ongoing bloody taxi violence that has claimed many lives.
Mamabolo said he has since realised that if the government works closely with the taxi industry, the violence could be stopped.
“At the summit, the industry leaders were determined to stop the violence. They raised concerns that the government was not co-operating with them.They said there is failure by law-enforcement agencies to arrest perpetrators.”
The inquiry will take six months.