Business Report writes that the taxi industry, whose protests last week resulted in many of the streets around Johannesburg and Midrand becoming gridlocked, is planning to embark on a national strike and protests next month.

MP Filtane, spokesperson for the Mass Taxi Industry Protest Action Committee, a taxi industry splinter group that last month organised the blockade at Toyota SA’s manufacturing plant in Prospecton in Durban in protest at its total exclusion from the industry’s value chain, confirmed on Monday that the industry would be going on strike on 15 July. Government entities would be targeted during the strike.  Filtane said the strike and protests were to highlight several issues, including taxi operating licences and confusion about who obtained operating licences; transport subsidies that excluded the taxi industry; and the way state-owned lending institutions ignored the taxi industry.  “It will be a general national strike and taxi operators will probably not operate at all on that day and use the time to march on the offices of the national transport department, Treasury, branches of the IDC and PIC,” Filtane indicated.

Save