Taxi industry must conform to regulations or close down

ONE MAJOR area that government does not seem to have much control, from day one post apartheid, is the lawless taxi industry.

No private organisation, including self-serving charitable organisations and NGOs, continues to exist except to make some profit. The taxi industry is doing NO FAVOURS out of the goodness of taxi bosses. The last consideration is the welfare of anybody else, exactly like all supermarkets, industries, logistic firms, private hospitals and even many, many private medical practitioners. Let’s not bluff ourselves. Even among the teaching fraternity, including the highfalutin education departments and all private schools, it’s all about a salary at the end, for front-counter service personnel and some hefty dividends to shareholders. It’s the system.

During this Covid-19 period, almost everybody is experiencing an economic knock: so many industries, shops, service providers, restaurants, governing body and private school educators have all been badly affected. Restrictions at supermarkets, additional personnel to control sanitising, long queues everywhere, have all added to costs and reduced profits. Learners have been deprived of basic education.

The point is: everybody, virtually has been adversely affected. We all are suffering losses. This is nobody’s fault. But WHY does the taxi industry of this country so rigidly believe that it is exempted from sustaining any loss, like the way the rest of us are losing out?

What exactly allows, from day one that this informal industry was created, to permit it to break virtually all the rules that the rest of us are subjected to? Parking, overtaking, speeding, rude behaviour, drugged drivers, etc, and now insisting on challenging the vital, possibly the only life-saving device of maintaining a safe distance from anybody else, by loading every inch of space in their vehicles?

The psychic effect on commuters who daily experience this lawlessness that escapes any form of effective prosecution can only be imagined as having a knock-on chain reaction that probably encourages indiscipline and fosters some form of frustration and anger at other systems around. It’s absolutely of no value to keep the minority at bay with all kinds of rules to stop infections when the majority workforce is unable to be controlled most satisfactorily. The taxi industry must be told in no ambiguous language: Conform or close down. EBRAHIM ESSA | Durban