Gauteng community safety committee wants taxi violence urgently addressed

JOHANNESBURG - The Gauteng legislature’s community safety committee wants the provincial government to prioritise interventions aimed at addressing rising incidents of taxi violence.

This follows the recent murder of three marshals in Soweto.

On Monday, a group of marshals who were reporting for duty were shot and killed in Mofolo.

Gauteng Transport MEC Diale Tlabela condemned the acts of violence that pose a continuous threat to communities in which they operate.

According to the provincial community safety portfolio committee, more than 10 people were gunned down in March in Katlehong, east of Johannesburg.

The chairperson of the portfolio committee, Bandile Masuku, said, “The committee strongly condemns these killings and calls for the Gauteng SAPS [South African Police Service] to intensify visible policing, intelligence-led operations and swift arrests to dismantle the criminal elements fuelling this violence.”

Masuku said they’d also given the provincial police commissioner a formal request for a progress report on investigations on all taxi-related killings.