The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the support from the Portfolio Committee of Transport today for the establishment of a subcommittee to look into the issue of illegally converted taxis. This follows a presentation by the Department of Transport (DoT) on the progress of the remedial actions instructed by the Public Protector (PP) in the report into the illegal conversion of Toyota Quantum panel vans into passenger-carrying minibus taxis, released in 2019.
For some reason this item, scheduled for discussion 5 November 2019 fell away and only re-surfaced now – nearly a year later, causing many of the instructions by the PP to have not been met. Due to this oversight, many more illegal vehicles, of various makes, have since been registered and pose a risk to all on the road. Many more unsuspecting owners are also now in deeper financial distress with no proper solution at hand.
The DA motivated for a subcommittee on the basis that several other parties were complicit in the prevalence of illegal taxi and vehicle conversions as mentioned in the Public Protector report, and received instructions to act in respect of these illegal vehicles, yet no mention was made of them in the presentation by the DoT. Also, directives and time limits expressed in the remedial action were seemingly ignored with no indication of progress by the Minister of Transport, the Director-General of the DoT, the Minister of Trade and Industry, the Chief Executive Officer of Toyota South Africa, the President and Executives of SANTAGO, NTA and all other Taxi formations who were affected.
The Public Protector investigation did, however, fall short of adequately addressing all the issues related to illegal taxi and vehicle conversions:
- Illegally converted ambulances were excluded. The DA discovered and exposed the illegal conversion of panel vans into ambulances in October last year and called on Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula to take action in this regard, as well as the illegal taxis.
- The trend of un-homologised conversions is also not dealt with in the report.
The reality is that these Toyota Quantum taxis, as well as ambulances and now also other vehicle types, are being converted into passenger-carrying transportation which is being “registered” on the DoT’s Natis-system in what seems to be an easy, straight forward, “over the counter” process.
It is clear that much more needs to be done beyond the Public Protector’s remedial instructions to address this danger on our roads and to ensure the safety of all road commuters.
We are therefore pleased that Parliament has agreed to this subcommittee as requested by the DA as an effort to focus on both the shortfalls of the report and reluctance to solve this potential crisis.