- Taking four taxi trips a day over 21 working days, every R1 added to a fare costs about R84 more a month.
- Santaco says a rise is a last resort. Local taxi associations decide fares after talking to commuters.
Taxi fares have not gone up, but the numbers show how fast a rise would bite. For a worker who takes four taxi trips a day, every R1 added to a fare costs R84 more a month.
That comes from the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group’s way of counting a minimum wage worker’s travel. It assumes two taxis each way, so four trips a day, over 21 working days in a month. At R24 a trip, the group’s fare for Pietermaritzburg, that is R96 a day and R2,016 a month. The national minimum wage is R30.23 an hour, which comes to R5,078.64 in a month with 21 working days. So travel alone takes about R40 of every R100.
On that count, here is what a rise would add each month. R1 more a trip adds R84, R2 adds R168, R3 adds R252 and R5 adds R420. If you take only one taxi each way, two trips a day, halve those amounts: R42, R84, R126 and R210.Fares have already gone up this year.
In Pietermaritzburg, they rose R4, from R20 to R24, on 1 June, according to the group. In other areas it tracks, local fares rose by R2, R3 and R5 between March and June. The South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) spokesperson Rebecca Phala has said taxi associations raised fares only once this year.
Santaco said it is not making any decision yet. Its national executive committee decided on Wednesday, 7 October, to keep fares as they are.
“We want to reassure commuters that there is currently no fare increase being introduced,” public relations officer Semang Masemola said.
Santaco says no blanket increase has been confirmed, and that individual taxi associations consult commuters before changing fares, so any rise could differ by area.
Phala told SABC News that fuel takes the bulk of operators’ income, and that a rise would be a last resort.
A routine meeting with the Ministry of Transport is planned for the week of 12 October, with fuel prices at the top of the agenda.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has called for government to bring back the fuel levy relief it introduced in April.
October’s diesel increase was R2.84 or R3.24 a litre. Early data points to a possible increase in November, but it is too early to say.
