Program Director,
Honourable Ministers and Deputy Ministers here present
All Royal Highnesses
Acting Directors General and Senior Government officials here present
Leaders of Organised Labour, Leaders of Business
Members of the Media
Members of SATAWU, SANTACO, Top Six Taxi Management, SANTADA & DOT & UIF
It is indeed a great honour for me to address you on issues pertaining to the Taxi sector, South Africa. The theme of this summit “Making the Taxi Sector part of the mainstream interventions” resonate well with the objectives of the Department of Labour.
The Taxi sector brings with it its own dynamics and issues, but allow me to pause a bit at the historic importance of this sector of our economic activity. Historically, this mode of transporting people from the townships to the cities started in the late 1930’s in townships such as Sophiatown. It was during this period of heightened repression that the Taxi sector merged not only as a response to the socio economic plight of our people but more importantly as a sector that was started, developed and owned by black entrepreneurs. All of this happened during a period of repression (1930 to 1975) where the taxi owners were particularly harassed by traffic officers, the vehicles confiscated for petty offences as well as restrictive laws placing limits on the number of passengers that could be transported in a black taxi.
It was also during this this time that the industry players came together and started organising themselves into local informal associations and this has grown into the formalised structures that we see today in the number of different associations not only organised along routes and regions but also organised at a national level.
It is these organisations that have seen the emergence of the sixteen seater taxis, taxi credit organisations and even to the point where they could tell the huge multi national motor manufacturers such as Toyota how they would want to see their vehicles. The Siyaya brand that we see running our streets is testimony to this immense growth in the taxi sector. Beyond this the sector has ventured into a number of alternative transport related initiatives such as the Rapid Bus Transport System as well as air travel that shows how committed this sector is to the economic development agenda of this country.
So any notion that this sector remains in the doldrums of informality is seriously misled. However the discourse on transformation from informal to formal economies cannot only end there. This debate however has to extend beyond issues of subsidies and recapitalisation. It has to move beyond the notion of being tax compliant. It has to start engaging with the countries commitment to decent work.
Together with both employers and employees in the sector, the Department of Labour has gone a long way in starting this debate. The first sectoral determination for the Taxi Sector was promulgated on 28 April 2005, by my predecessor, Minister Membathisi Mdladlana and launched in Pretoria with stakeholders’ approval. Conditions of employment became effective on the second week of May, and wages became effective only on 1 July 2005. This determination has been amended a few times and fundamentally seeks to respond to the peculiar employment conditions that the sector requires. The Unemployment Insurance Fund has initiated a number of major initiatives in order to bring the owners, operators and their employers into the fold. This however still remains an area where we still need to make significant progress in order to say that we have made an impact.
And it is within this context that this seminar has been devised. In our attempts to advance towards greater formality, the protection of our workers must be one of the major clarion calls that we rally around. It makes no sense that we invest hundreds of thousands of rand into very expensive vehicles and we ask our workers to exhaust themselves to the point where our vehicles become a threat unto themselves. Just as important as a fully functional brake system is in protecting your assets so is the need that your driver or employees enjoy good working conditions.
Programme Director, we are mindful of the fact that the sector faces a number of challenges. We are mindful of the fact that the sector at this juncture probably stands at thé most important structural shift in its history – its movement to greater formality. This transformation however cannot happen in the absence of our commitment to decent work. We are alive to the realisation that this is not a walk that you can walk outside of the other challenges the sector face or that you can walk this walk alone. This seminar serves as a commitment that in realising decent work in the taxi sector, the department of Labour stands ready to assist you. But this also requires a commitment from your side that you should be willing to work with us across all areas of the labour regime so that we realise greater comfort to the owners and decent employment for the workers in the sector.
I therefore believe that, this seminar serves as another step towards safeguarding the rights of workers in the taxi sector. Social partners must work together to achieve the Constitutional objectives of ensuring that all workers have a right to fair labour practice and have access to an environment which is not harmful to their social well-being. I hope that the commitments that we shall all declare today will be translated into tangible actions that will yield positive results in the foreseeable future.
Let’s join hands and transport South Africa forward.
I thank you.
