Pretoria - Commuters in and around Polokwane were left high and dry yesterday morning when the buses ferrying them to work every day failed to arrive.
This was because 100 taxi drivers blocked the buses from leaving the depot at Ladanna.
The Seshego Polokwane Taxi Association accused the Polokwane municipality that controls the bus rapid transit project, Leeto La Polokwane, of not upholding the memorandum of agreement signed back in 2017.
Chief among their concerns was that the municipality was rolling in phase 1b, which is to extend the route to the Mall of Africa north without consulting them or compensating them.
During Phase 1 the municipality and the association agreed to take off more than 90 taxis from the streets while compensating the owners and employing the drivers.
Some of the other concerns were for the municipality not upholding their agreement to employ some of the drivers who lost their jobs.
Speaking to the Pretoria News yesterday, the drivers’ chairperson vowed there would be more action if the municipality did not uphold its end of the bargain.
He said: “The biggest issue we have with the municipality is that our members have a problem that the municipality is not upholding its end of the agreement.
“Now we have to be on Phase 1b, which is a route to the Mall of the North. But the municipality has already applied for the route to Mall of the North without consulting us as agreed in the memorandum.
“Instead of them coming back to us they went straight to the department of transport to apply for a permit to use that route.
“Another one is for people to pay cash inside the bus when there was an agreement that commuters would buy at ticket stations in order for them to take a bus. Now they are paying cash all of a sudden.
“At least 93 drivers lost their jobs in the first phase as not everyone was employed by the bus project when we had agreed that we would be employed to do odd jobs of washing the buses and ticket control.”
Leeto La Polokwane spokesperson Rebotile Malakana said after a meeting with the taxi associations, the outcomes were positive.
Pretoria News