Kgaugelo Maja is filling the customer’s vehicle with petrol at Shell Garage Soshanguve Block H, a day before the petrol price rise in the rest of the country.
The petrol price reached the maximum amount for the first time ever. The price of the petrol is increased with 81c per litre, which made it to be sold with R13.00 a litre. South African motorist are expected to dig down in to their pocket to keep the wheel rolling. The decreasing value of Rand and the increment of the crude oil are the main cause of the rises of the petrol.
Soshanguve residents such as Siphokahle Khumalo, who is unemployed and make living by transporting children from Soshanguve to different schools, are affected negatively by this price which was never seen before. “Yes the petrol price is affecting me negatively in terms of my job of transporting children to schools, especially for the money I’ve charged their parents for transporting them. Anyway, I don’t know what to say, but it affects me seriously. I’m out of budget because of it,” says Siphokahle Khumalo.
Sello Legodi who is the Human Resource Manager at Eskom in Pretoria is also concern about the petrol price, since he is staying in Soshanguve but working in Pretoria town. He is using his own car for transport to Pretoria and continued to tell us that “the increase of petrol price is tough, especially this nowadays, because the life is too expensive. The more petrol price is increased, is the more lot of things increase prices. So the government must do something about these prices, just like in Namibia. Just look at Namibia, the petrol price is very cheap.
South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) announced lately that South Africans must expect the increments on taxi fares countrywide due to the high price of petrol. They say is not in their control to increase these prices, but is the high price of petrol that makes them to increase prices. Albert Shabalala a taxi driver in Soshanguve and Mabopane said “obvious no one would like to see petrol increasing the price like this. It is really affecting us negatively; it increased with 81. Yah it’s affecting us negatively.”