SANTACO KwaZulu-Natal says there was nothing they could do, and they should have increased the taxi fare because the situation they are facing is beyond their control, there is no way to avoid it.
This was said by Mr. Sfiso Shangase who is the spokesperson for this industry in the province speaking toOf this country after the social media showed a lot of complaints from passengers about the increase and loss of fares in different parts of the province.
Shangase said that this is not about enriching themselves or burdening their passengers but it is about them being able to breathe as taxi owners.
He said the way the situation is now in South Africa, it has become difficult to live there because everything is going up, he said that they started to ignore the increase in petrol in the first phase with the thought that it might go down again and they didn’t ask the sun, instead it will go up again.
“Everything has gone up, it’s not easy to keep quiet,” he said.
He said that their silence on not increasing the fare would mean that their cars would end up being at great risk of being stolen, a situation that he said no taxi driver wants to be faced with.
The most unfortunate thing, he said, is that they understand very well that they are only increasing the fare but the salaries of their passengers have not increased at all for the different jobs they do.
He said, however, that this is a situation that is not easy for them to fix, but it is something that the employees have to fight for in the jobs they are employed in.
”You see right now to tell you the truth, it’s hard for all of us. No one can say that it is easy for him when things are like this. This is the last time it’s ruined if it’s like this,” he said.
He said that what proves that they also do not like to increase the fare is that in the recent meeting held by the taxi drivers, the smallest amount of money was voted to increase the fare.
“You can see how sympathetic the taxi drivers are to their passengers and they know that some of them are employees and some of them come from families that are not easy to deal with this situation that we are all facing right now,” he explained.
Short-distance taxis have increased in price from R2 to R6 and long-distance taxis have increased from R10 to R30.