Ignatius Jacobs at the Annual General Meeting of the Gauteng Taxi Council
26 October 2007
Friends
Colleagues
Ladies and gentlemen:
Twenty-four months ago, our province initiated and launched the Transport
Month campaign in order to stimulate intensive public debate regarding the
nature and type of public transport system that the residents of our province,
and the people of our country would like to have.
We did this fully aware of the need to change the state of public transport
in Gauteng, taking into account the extent to which it enables us address the
transport needs of our communities.
The Transport Month Campaign has told us that public transport is the most
convenient mode of transport. It also said that of the three public transport
modes, that is taxis, buses and trains, the taxi industry accounts for more
than 65 percent of people who use public transport in our province. This,
therefore, indicates to government, commuters and the taxi operators, the
pressing need to build a strong partnership to improve the quality of service
in the industry, informed by the notion of Batho Pele, putting people
first.
As government, we have made a commitment to support the taxi industry to
modernise its services, while at the same time, we continue to commit more
resources to the development of an effective, efficient and integrated public
transport system. In the same vein, we have a made commitment to ensure that
the taxi industry ultimately gets to benefit from a commuter subsidy because of
its role as the mover of the majority of public transport users in our
province. On that note, such support must also be accompanied by a joint effort
to improve the quality of public transport services across the modal divide,
especially in the taxi industry.
Collectively, all three spheres of government continue to build new taxi
ranks, while also introducing policies such High Occupancy Vehicle Lane (HOV)
that is meant to help us move as many people as possible to their various
destinations, ensuring that they arrive on time. This shows our awareness of
the important role and the place that the taxi industry occupies in a future
transport system that we all envisage for our province.
In a few days time, we will gather at the Bree Street Taxi Rank to conduct a
cleansing ceremony of one of the biggest public transport hubs in our country,
in a place where thousands of our people descend, on daily basis as they go
from home to work and vice versa. This is the place where the taxi industry
conducts its business by providing much needed transport for our
communities.
The message that we are sending, as government, by conducting this ceremony,
working hand in hand with the taxi industry and the Gauteng Commuter
Organisation, is that our people need to travel in conditions of safety, free
from harm and injury.
The taxi industry needs to elevate its services to a level where they are
able to provide their passengers with reliable information on the service they
provide, such that this helps in the integration of taxis, buses and trains
into a single and united service.
The past ten days have also borne witness to the successful piloting of the
public transport friendly HOV Lane on the M1 North, as well as the Ben Schoeman
Highway, as well the hosting of the Car Free Day Concert, at Johannesburg
Stadium. Work is also being done to speedily implement the Gauteng Freeway
Improvement Scheme in order to ensure that our roads infrastructure serves its
purpose, that being to support economic growth and development and to ensure
sustainable mobility for people and essential social development services.
In the last week of the month we will be launching with an Expanded Public
Works Programme(EPWP) Women's Cooperative that will be maintaining the Golden
Highway and also launch a Youth Service as part of youth development programme,
focusing on access to training and development programmes in both our Public
Works and Transport branches.
We are implementing all of these programmes in order to improve service
delivery and we're confident that your organisation will also play an important
part in the success of all our socio-economic growth and development
programmes, based on the understating of the role of transport in our
economy.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Public Transport, Roads and Works, Gauteng
Provincial Government
26 October 2007
Source: Gauteng Provincial Government (http://www.gauteng.gov.za)
