The alliance cannot, unfortunately, afford to reduce the number of passengers in taxis to make for more breathing space.
Pretoria – The National Taxi Alliance has instructed its queue marshals to encourage passengers and taxi drivers across the country to wear masks, avoid touching and wash their hands at destinations.
The alliance responsible for transporting millions of passengers daily said it acknowledged that millions of people depending on taxis are vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.
President of the alliance Franscis Masitsa said messages cautioning passengers will be pasted inside every taxi registered with the alliance.
They are working with Khwela, a company responsible for digitilisation of the industry, who announced that they’ve already ordered bulk sanitation goods that will be distributed across various taxi ranks and taxi hot spots.
Skhosana Khumalo from Khwela, said the sanitisers will be distributed firstly to the biggest and busiest taxi ranks that see hundreds of thousands of people on any given day.
He said they will also be working with the taxi alliance to ensure that they will be disseminating information to passengers across the country.
Masitsa said taxi passengers should avoid touching each other in taxis, wear masks in taxis and taxi ranks, avoid breathing too close to each other, wash hands at destinations and cover their mouths and noses when sneezing or coughing.
He said the alliance cannot, unfortunately, afford to reduce the number of passengers in taxis to make for more breathing space.
He said they were caught off guard by the pendemic meaning that passengers will unfortunately still have to pass cash by hand.
However, he said it would be best to avoid unnecessary contact.
Pretoria News
