The Democratic Alliance (DA) will request an urgent meeting with the Minister of Transport, Fikile Mbalula, to provide answers to the portfolio committee of transport on truck violence on our roads across the country.
We are deeply concerned by the return of truck attacks which in our view is nothing short of economic sabotage. While the DA understands that employment opportunities in the industry are narrow and made worse by government’s inaction, we call on Minister Mbalula to break his silence and bring an end to this sabotage.
It is clear there is no apparent intervention by the government as these attacks keep resurfacing on an annual basis. We began seeing this form of economic sabotage back in 2018 with the Mooirivier incident and again last year on the N3 in KwaZulu-Natal. The cause of these protest actions is due to the apparent unhappiness over foreign drivers being hired by trucking companies for lesser wages.
The DA is concerned that this truck violence may have xenophobic undertones and we reject these sentiments in the strongest terms.
We call on Minister Mbalula to clamp down on persons and companies that may be exploiting foreign workers in order to turn a profit as this is in contravention of the Constitution and South Africa’s labour laws.
The DA will prioritize this matter and engage Parliament to ensure that South African citizens and foreign national with the necessary documentation have fair access to employment opportunities while also maintaining our cross border logistics. We cannot afford to have the road freight industry brought to a halt as it brings in billions to our economy.
The DA will demand answers from the Minister in Parliament to gauge what government is doing to bring an end to these continued acts of economic sabotage. We will also be posing questions to the South African Police Service on what their intelligence efforts have been in combating these acts of arson.
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