Taxi motherbody SANTACO says it hopes today’s task meeting will iron out the issues current impacting its relationship with the City of Cape Town, and provincial government.

The industry has been at loggerheads with officials for a number of weeks, which has resulted in an 8-day taxi strike, violence, the loss of lives, and a devastating toll on the economy. The taxi council’s Mandla Hermanus has confirmed that taxi bosses will be attending this morning’s meeting, adding that they no longer want to be viewed as thugs:

THE JOURNEY OF REBUILDING THE FRAGILE RELATIONSHIP

“We are hoping that the task team will start rebuilding the relationship that we have with government. Currently it is at an all-time low, given how we have been portrayed as hooligans and thugs. We are hoping we will start to rebuild that.”

READ MORE: Taxi task team meeting this week

Hermanus adds all stakeholders should be working to resolve the current impasse.

“It should not be the role of our government to promote a negative view of the industry. Most of this emanates from our government officials. Their role is to partner with us, to ensure that we provide a service that is acceptable to our communities.”

A FINANCIAL LOSS OF OVER R20 MILLION

Furthermore, Hermanus says the recent taxi stay-away has had a detrimental affect on all parties. He says while the local economy suffered, the taxi industry industry also lost out on tens of millions of rands worth of earnings:

“If you look at the 8 days that we did not operate, we hear the economy lost over R60 million. The industry alone lost over R20 million.”