The country’s taxi industry aims to register its own security company and to work in collaboration with the police and the private security sector
Zondi said Santaco had resolved at its annual general meeting that it needed to “build a strong partnership” with security companies and “all enforcement units” and that this had arisen “out of the challenges we are facing as a taxi industry in KZN”. This, he said, included high crime at taxi ranks and the presence of people wearing branded clothing who pretended to be protecting passengers but instead robbed them.
In Port Shepstone, on the South Coast, where crime was prevalent, Santaco had hired unemployed people to patrol the streets to protect commuters from criminals. “In KZN, there are 17 million people, and a few police officers. It is impossible for the police to be everywhere and we are in charge of all the taxi ranks. We have more than 200 taxi ranks in KZN where we can help close that gap and say, ‘Not in our area … everything that is not supposed to be happening in our taxi ranks — no more.’”
He said the industry would continue to hire private security firms until it was ready to register its own company.