A Dunoon taxi association’s marshals have been doing such a good job policing its drivers, a man said at a ratepayers’ meeting last week, that he would vote for them if they were a political party.
The marshals appeared on the scene after the Table View Ratepayers’ Association (TVRA) and the Dunoon Taxi Association (DTA) met in May to talk about how to improve taxi-driver behaviour.
At the TVRA’s annual general meeting, at the Leibrandt van Niekerk Hall, on Wednesday November 22, chairman Andile Peter said the DTA had outlined a problem it had with taxis that came into Table View from many areas, including Khayelitsha and Gugulethu, making it hard to identify errant drivers.
A resident from the floor praised the DTA marshals for a job well done but asked if they couldn’t be spread out more evenly.
“If the DTA marshals were a political party, I would have voted for them,” he said.
The man said there were no marshals at some intersections, such as the Montague Gardens and Koeberg Road interchange, while at other spots there were three to four.
Another resident said the taxi-marshals plan could work elsewhere. “The roads are safer now with the DTA marshals. Taxis in other areas are going to learn from what is happening in Table View,” he said.
Also at the meeting, Ward 113 councillor Dr Joy McCarthy said she had had vagrants moved from the area near the water slide and baby drop, which she said was now “neat and tidy”.
But she said she was “losing Potsdam interchange” to vagrancy, gangsters, drugs and prostitution, and nothing could be done until the anti-land invasion unit stepped in. Vagrants were also invading neglected greenbelts in her ward.
She said she had fenced Regent Road greenbelt and was considering turning the area into a leash-free dog park. The gates would close at sunset and opened at sunrise by “park monitors”, residents living nearby.