Transport Minister, Barbara Creecy, has said the government was looking at options, along with the banks, of de-risking borrowing for the taxi industry by using the taxi recapitalisation fund as part of measures of reducing borrowing costs for taxi operators as the industry struggles to to keep up with commercial loans.

Speaking on 702 talk radio this morning, Creecy said the issue of unroadworthy public vehicles needed to be looked at from an economic perspective where everybody, including drivers themselves, do not want unroadworthy vehicles on the road.

She said taxi operators were contending with paying more in loan repayments for their taxis than they were earning in a month from the vehicles.

“Part of the reason for this is the risk associated with lending money to the taxi industry,” Creecy said.

“We are having a look at where the pools of public money are in the government system and we are wanting to do some work together with the banks to look at if it is appropriate to use this money as a scrapping allowance or whether it would be better to use as money to de risk the cost of the loans.

“A driver can pay R20 000 a month for a loan on a vehicle you and I could pay R5 000 a month for it. And when you realise that driver is earning about R16 000 you can understand why the drivers drive irresponsibly and also why you would see a situation of repossessions and a lot of unroadworthy vehicles continuing to be on the road.”

Rebecca Phala, the spokesperson for the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco), clarified that the ongoing discussions would be about additional measures to the existing taxi recapitalisation programme as there were raising concerns that the grant from government, at about R150 000, was insufficient to help operators buy vehicles that are upwards of R500 000.

“It is not want they want to convert the taxi recapitalisation fund but there is a process to lobby the banks and business to be more lenient to the taxi industry,” Phala said.

“It is not necessarily converting the entire fund but this would be in addition as the taxi industry is not buying into the scrapping programme because the money is insufficient.”

Creecy said analysis of road deaths, which spiralled to about 11 883 in the last year with more than 6 000 of those over the festive period, indicated that that driver behaviour was the major cause due to fatigue and unroadworthy vehicles, adding that road conditions and environmental factors played a part.

In another development, Creecy said the South African National Road Agency Limited (Sanral) was engaged in ongoing infrastructure projects to widen roads, take out dangerous curves, repair and widen bridges that would be ceded provincial feeder roads as a lot of problems occur on provincial secondary roads.

“Some of the roads the Department of Transport has now migrated to Sanral feeder roads to national roads so we can assist provinces to improve the conditions of these roads,” she said.

“Working together with provinces to follow the money one of the problems we face is we give conditional grants to provinces every year to improve roads but sometimes this money is not spent or contractors walk away with a shoddy job. We are putting back in place systems to follow the money so we get better outcomes.”

Creecy said one of the fundamental problems in a number of provinces was that there was no longer what is called “Yellow Feet”, the guys you will see working by the side of the road filling potholes and re-tarring.

She said a big focus was to try and reinstitute appropriate capacity within provinces and municipalities where this function has been significantly eroded.

“We are putting in place mechanisms to follow the money but also support to rebuild the road departments with appropriate infrastructure. We can’t be tendering out every minor road maintenance activity, some have to be done in-house and we have the capability to do it,” Creecy said.

“Dealing with a logistics system that has enormous challenges and as pointed out, road safety problem almost 12 000 people dying annually, it is a huge cost for the economy, costing us almost 3% of GDP last year

"We have so far this year conducted roadblocks that have pulled half a million cars and we've put about 61% more roadblocks on the roads, also focusing on our 20 hotspots, places where majority of accidents happen. We have arrested 695 drivers and obviously this would be situations of extreme breaches of the law, people who are fundamentally exceeding speed limit. Over 60% of road deaths are pedestrians. We have a special operation to focus on enforcement with pedestrians. More than 2 000 unroadworthy vehicles have been removed, also removed public transport drivers who are not licensed.”

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