/ 10 June 2000

Union meets over bus drivers’ safety

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 1.40pm.

THE Transport and General Workers’ Union has called an urgent meeting to decide if it is safe for the Golden Arrow bus company to operate in Cape Town’s townships.

Bus services to Khayelitsha have been suspended after a Golden Arrow bus driver was shot at and wounded, and passengers slightly injured in two separate ambushes in Kayalitsha in Cape Town on Friday morning.

Police said in one attack on a Golden Arrow bus in Landsdowne Road, the passengers were slightly injured by flying glass.

The bus driver was shot in the second ambush at Harare Bus Terminus in the township. The attacks are part of the on-going feud between taxi drivers and the Golden Arrow bus company in Kayalitsha in Cape Town.

On Thursday Golden Arrow Bus Services accused political parties of “political point scoring” while commuters and bus drivers suffer. It said the local government and police are not doing enough to help end the violence which began on March 27.

Taxi organisations blame third force elements for the attacks. They have demanded that Golden Arrow scale down its services in the townships and to cease operating at weekends.

So far two bus drivers and a taxi driver have been killed, several commuters injured and buses stoned and petrol bombed.