Taxis take over City

HUNDREDS of taxi drivers took over the streets of Windhoek yesterday to protest at the City Police’s recent emphasis on an existing municipal regulation which they say is forcing them to damage their vehicles.

Parked taxis blocked all roads leading to the City Police’s Headquarters, on the corner of Sishen and Essens streets, until at least midday. At the same time, taxi drivers who wanted to work during the morning had to defy that very regulation in order to hide their identities and avoid being pulled over by their colleagues and forced, at times violently, to join in the protest.The drama started at around 09h00, when representatives of the Namibia Bus and Taxi Association (Nabta) met with City Police Chief Abraham Kanime and a delegation from his office over the need for taxi signs to be fastened to the cars’ roofs permanently.The City Police recently started penalising taxi drivers whose lamps are not bolted to their cars, apparently fining them N$300 whenever they went to renew their municipal registration certificates, compulsory for all public transport vehicles.Most taxi drivers and owners spoken to yesterday acknowledged that they owned magnetic lamps which could simply be placed on the cars’ roofs, while others said they kept the taxi signs on their dashboards.They said it affects the resale value of their taxis if they have to make holes in the roof, causing leaks.They also want to remove the taxi signs when they use their cars for private purposes over weekends.The City Police argues that these easily removable taxi signs make it easier for criminals to use taxis in housebreakings, robberies and the transportation of stolen goods, simply hiding the signs when things get hot.While Nabta and the City Police were locked in a closed-door session for most of the morning, agitated taxi operators lined the building outside, forcing Police to put up a barricade in front of their office entrance.With time to kill, a number of the protesting operators started patrolling Independence Avenue, pulling over other taxis that tried to benefit from the lack of competition on the roads.One reluctant driver, Frobrians Ashipala, was pulled out of his taxi and almost got into a physical fight with some of the men who pulled him over.He told The Namibian that, while supporting his colleagues’ cause, he had been unaware of the morning’s activities.These sentiments were shared by a number of other ‘forced participants’ who spoke to the newspaper.The taxi blockage spread all the way down to the Windhoek Central Prison, where at least one reluctant taxi driver had his windows broken by protesters.Members of the Namibian Police’s Special Field Force were called to the scene and managed to restore order. The closed-door meeting ended at around 11h00, after which Kanime spent a further hour and a half communicating the outcome to the crowd.He said the Police would not compromise on the need for taxi lamps to be fastened permanently to ease identification, but said it was giving Nabta three weeks to come up with ways in which this could be done professionally and without damaging the taxis.The next meeting between Nabta and the City Police is scheduled for August 17.In the meantime, Kanime said the City would stop fining those in contravention of Municipal Regulation 24 1(e).Anyone who has been fined for this has been advised to make an appointment with the City Police chief to explain their circumstances.’We’re looking at a current figure of 7 967 outstanding warrants just of taxi drivers. Add to that the highest number of warrants found outstanding for one person was 32, and imagine the chaos,’ Kanime told the protesters.Nabta president Magnus Nangombe estimated the number of protesters yesterday to have been around 4 000.