The National E-Hailing Federation of South Africa (NEFSA) says its attempts to engage the national Transport Department on its concerns about the new regulations have been unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
The regulations, which took effect last month. They include a requirement that e-hailing services should brand their vehicles and install panic buttons.<\/p>\n
However, NEFSA President Elijah Lekgowane says branding vehicles exposes their members to attacks.<\/p>\n
Lekgowane says, \u201cWe will not sufficiently engage with respect to this. Our very attempt to draw the attention of the department, to engage us on our inputs, has been ignored. Last year, the entire year, we\u2019ve been begging them to let us engage in decisions even before the announcement made in September.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve not been doing so, and now there\u2019s this talk-down approach and parachuting, imposing these regulations against us. They\u2019re not serving a purpose for those that they\u2019re intended for; it touches on branding issues and your panic button issues, those are just minor issues that any car owner has.\u201d<\/p>\n
He adds, \u201cThe issue here is the issue of violence and the issue of the economy. Branding on its own, it also increases the risk for those drivers who are attacked now, as identified picking up passengers, and now it\u2019s going to be a clear target when it\u2019s branded.\u201d<\/p>\n
–SABC–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":23211,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-30963","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"NEFSA President Elijah Lekgowane says branding vehicles exposes their members to attacks.","published_date":"","news_description":"NEFSA President Elijah Lekgowane says branding vehicles exposes their members to attacks.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30964,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30963\/revisions\/30964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=30963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}