Gauteng’s planned monorail should be kept off taxi routes, the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) said on Friday.
The project is a private-sector initiative by the Malaysian investment consortium Newcyc Vision, with which Gauteng finance and economic affairs minister Paul Mashatile, public transport, road and works minister Ignatius Jacobs and Gauteng Economic Development Agency CEO Keith Khoza signed a deal on Wednesday.
Santaco secretary general Philip Taaibosch said there was no agreement between the taxi industry and the government on the planned monorail between Soweto and central Johannesburg.
He said the project would be ”irresponsible spending and an utter waste of taxpayers’ money” if implemented without the taxi industry’s involvement.
Taaibosch said the industry and government had established a good partnership based on consultation, and the monorail plan was disrupting this.
He told Beeld on Thursday that a presentation was given to the taxi industry by the Malaysian consortium, and another was supposed to follow, but this never happened.
”I don’t think Jacobs represents the taxi industry’s view,” he told the newspaper, referring to Jacobs saying that the industry had been approached in the planning of the monorail.
On Wednesday, the Gauteng government announced plans for a R12-billion monorail between Johannesburg and Soweto, to be built within the next two years. The government said the monorail would complement, not compete with, other forms of transport.
”By 2009, no one from Soweto should have to wait more than 15 minutes for transport,” Gauteng finance and economic affairs minister Paul Mashatile said at the launch of the project in Sandton.
Work on the 44,7km monorail and its 39 stations will start in September.
It is hoped the monorail will move 1,5-million passengers a day between Soweto and Johannesburg, to ease congestion on the roads.
The monorail is expected to cost about R173-million a kilometre to build, but none of this will be borne by the government.