Thanks to sustained efforts to spread the message of road safety to drivers and taxi owners, the taxi industry has welcomed zero fatalities on the roads over the long Easter weekend.
In a briefing held on Tuesday the South African National Taxi Association (Santaco) Gauteng in collaboration with Teta a Sector Education Training Authority (Seta) responsible for skills development in the transport sector said they were relieved that the sector had not contributed to any fatalities over the long Easter weekend.
Bafana Magagula, chief strategic manager with the national Santaco, said thanks to the Hlokomela initiative started on November 17, 2010 the industry had managed to push back on road fatalities year-on-year over the holiday seasons.
Magagula on Tuesday said while the industry welcomed ensuring no fatalities this Easter and reduced fatalities to 3% during the December festive season, more effort had to be put in to ensure this trend continued as is.
“We need not be lazy to attend training and we need to be encouraged to attend training. We must stop blaming the roads, we know there are potholes there and the driver knows but the pothole is not driving its there.
“We need to keep encouraging and making a lot of noise because we can’t have a situation where each time it’s Easter holidays we have MECs reading fatalities and they say in Gauteng we’ve done better, simply because we’ve only killed 40 people because then we have still failed.”
Magagula said it was important to reach a time where there we celebrated no accidents on the roads and this begins with ensuring that road safety is something that is practised by everything.
Gauteng Roads and Logistics MEC Kedibone Diale-Tlabela said it was important to protect the industry and be proud that the sector was able to sustain itself despite all the challenges it had faced throughout the years.
Diale-Tlabela said it was important that while all road users routinely practised road safety, that conflict resolution should be among the core focus of stakeholders efforts as well.
While the MEC commended the sector for ensuring no fatalities over the Easter weekend, she reiterated that it was important to ensure that there were no fatalities across all transport modes in the country.
The Star
goitsemang.matlhabe@inl.co.za