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Cape Town police look on as a taxi is being towed away in light of the spate of taxi violence affecting commuters and drivers.
There’s a growing concern in the taxi industry in Cape Town over the court interdict to quell the taxi violence between two taxi associations, Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (CATA) and Cape Organisation for the Democratic Taxi Association (CODETA).
This after the Western Cape Government secured an urgent interdict aimed at ending taxi-related violence in several areas.
The interdict allows the government to take decisive action to protect commuters and curb violence linked to a route dispute in the Mfuleni, Khayelitsha, and Somerset West areas.
It prohibits taxi associations from interfering with services on specific routes and at key taxi ranks.
At least six people have been shot in taxi-related violence in Cape Town this week.
CATA spokesperson, Nkululeko Sityebi says this will have a negative impact on the commuters.
“It’s going to affect the industry, not only CATA, but the industry as a whole, as well as the commuters. The impact that it’s going to have with the taxi operators as well as the drivers, it’s going to be so negative because some drivers and owners will lose a lot of income when it comes to this issue, because of our own discipline, if we can’t discipline ourselves,” says Sityebi.
CODETA Spokesperson, Nceba Enge, says they respect the government’s decision to go the court route, but they need more intervention from government to avoid the conflict.
“Commuters will be struggling in this regard, as well as operators and the drivers. They will be struggling because remember they will be getting no income now. We respect the action taken by the government, of course, but we still feel the government has not done enough as we were expecting intervention. We were also expecting government to be decisive in terms of what is stipulated in the operating licenses document,” says Enge.
Cape Town commuters feeling unsafe using public transport due to taxi violence
Gang and Taxi Violence | Several people killed, others wounded in WC
