But in order for this to happen, it is important that SANTACO provinces, Regions and Associations will have to take active participation in all the processes as they unfold as all this ultimately meant to benefit them. Having said this in brief, I can therefore only expect that structures have now gone back to the boardrooms to seek how best they can position themselves on the basis of the tone set by the AGM. It is worthy of mentioning that, the next AGM will benchmark our progress and achievements and hence this sense of collectiveness becomes critical in whatever we do as a taxi business in the country. We need to see this shift through the eye of an entrepreneur who sees reason to strategically reposition his/her business in order to maximize business revenue. Unless we do this as a unit, the presentations made in the form of reports at the AGM become meaningless except for being referred to as spoken history.
Soon we’ll be undertaking provincial visits to report to the masses about the AGM, what is it that needs to be done, how do we intend to achieve that and finally the participation of our structures in all those phases. I therefore wish to urge all the members attending this AGM to become messengers of the SANTACO gospel and invite their fellow operators to this gathering and listen for themselves on where their business is headed. For a very long time have we been consumers and followers of products and plans presented to us by various quarters of our country. The sitting of the AGM was the beginning of the turning tide that will no longer look back perhaps out dubiousness. But this is a bumpy road. I would confine my motivation to the challenge that is unique to the Gauteng province.
The introduction of the Bus Rapid Transport system, the Gautrain and the monorail are telling examples of how threatened our business is to the changing times of our economy. But having noted that transport is the second largest contributor to our economy after communications, it means we as the largest carrier of the commuting public, we need to respond to these changes in a manner that creates better opportunities for our businesses. Hence, as you would remember at the AGM, we strongly spoke of diversification where we want to aggressively penetrate the transport sector in totality. It is for this reason that we are seriously investigating all these forms of new innovations and see what financial returns they hold firstly, for the taxi industry and secondly but most importantly those immediately affected by such changes. The latter are the actual drivers of our decisions because we present our arguments strictly considerate of how their businesses will be affected. As we shift and migrate our Associations into registered corporates, the partnerships we may create out of these innovations will benefit them effectively more and ensure their fair representation in the joint ventures. But also allow me to warn this AGM that it is imperative that in all consultative processes that government engages taxi structures on, you need to be weary of how the outcomes of your discussions can advantage government to implement these concepts much to the detriment of the same operators they have consulted with in the initial stages. We need to find some better mechanism of dealing with these processes and ensure that your superior structures are on board because then we would be doing this in unison for the betterment of the taxi industry. This then rolls into my second and equally critical factor of our business, which is UNITY.
SANTACO has an obligation to unify the taxi industry through the country and our structures are critical in this exercise. It is not a secret that since the formation of SANTACO until to date, there has been continuously growing stability in the taxi industry, violence has drastically subsided and business is shaping. But we need to take this further and amass our support base centrally to enable us to become the powerful business we aught to be. We need to create our own information society and write our own stories and history without external influence to ensure that the generation after us find a better playing field and a revolutionized business that will live forever. The three year cycle has been has to mark our turn around strategy that will put this business on the map. All this I have said, must be preceded by unity that is clearly reflected in all we do.
Thank you