Thousands of learners in the Eastern Cape did not struggle with transportation to school on Wednesday after the SA National Taxi Council (Santaco) temporarily suspended its planned strike.
The strike, widely publicised following a meeting of provincial taxi organisations last week, was to coincide with the reopening of schools in the province for the 2023 academic year.
Championing the strike were taxi bosses who have a deal with the provincial transport department to ferry pupils to and back from school.
Provincial coordinator at Santaco Gabs Mtshala confirmed the suspension of the strike and said the organisation has given the provincial government until Tuesday next week to process the payments.
“The strike was suspended after a lengthy engagement that we had with premier Oscar Mabuyane and MEC for transport Xolile Nqatha on Tuesday. They admitted their wrongs and promised to process the payments by Tuesday next week,” said Mtshala.
Despite an agreement to suspend the strike, Mtshala said the taxi operators are not overlooking other issues they have complained about. However, he said they are willing to engage the government on a continuous basis.
“Besides the payments, we had other issues that we needed to iron out with the department, like the number of learners that we transport, the state of roads in the province, and the continuous petrol hikes. However, we will wait for our new contracts [to be drafted] before we address the other issues.”
Meanwhile, Mabuyane said his government is attending to taxi operators’ complaints, especially the issue of delayed payments, due to the unavailability of funds.
“They will be paid by early next week and we are facilitating that to make sure that we get all the money that we are looking for,” Mabuyane said.
“We appreciate the patience that the service providers have shown because these people continued transporting our kids to school to finish their exams last year even though they had not been paid for months.
“We are dealing with all the teething problems in the system to improve the way we work.”
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