Incomplete Vereeniging taxi rank to be demolished
After more than five years of construction and a hefty bill of R64million, ROADS and Transport MEC Jacob Mamabolo has announced that his department will demolish the unfinished Vereeniging taxi rank and replace it with a larger intermodal rank incorporating retail space, long-distance buses and the train station.
Mamabolo told of the plan while addressing a small group of stakeholders at Sedibeng District Municipality’s offices. They included representatives of taxi associations and officials from the municipality and from Emfuleni Local Municipality.
He said the unfinished rank was “not what government and taxi operators wanted”. According to Independent News this contradicted a statement he made during a question-and-answer session in the Gauteng legislature in September, when he said the department had terminated services of Moreteng Investment – the contractor responsible for the unfinished rank – in 2018 as a result of it being insolvent and not because of “poor workmanship”. He said the contractor had been paid R64m.
DA member of the legislature Kingsol Chabalala said Mamabolo’s announcement exposed the incompetence of the ANC-led provincial government. “It cannot be that they (ANC officials) spent R64m on a taxi rank and later on want to demolish it. The project was supposed to be finished in 2015,” said Chabalala.
