EThekwini: Most areas will not have water for the next 7 days
By: Illovuonline.news.
25-07-2021
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Several areas under the eThekwini Municipality will be without water for at least 7 days due to a pump disruption in Shallcross.
The eThekwini Municipality has warned of water interruptions in parts of Shallcross, Klaarwater and Pinetown due to a major leak on a 750mm rising main from Northdene 3 pumps to Shallcross reservoir.
The Municipality said as a result of this leak, the Shallcross reservoir is battling to fill up, causing a strain on downstream reservoirs.
WATER OUTAGES IN AREAS UNDER ETHEKWINI
The municipality said the major leak is affecting the supply of water to other outer lying areas as there is a drop in trunk main pressure to adjacent systems.
“For this reason, some areas downstream of Shallcross reservoirs are already experiencing major outages.
“Repairs are underway on this major leak. Water tankers will be dispatched to all affected areas. Due to complexity and site conditions, it is projected that these repairs will take up to a week to effect hence water supply will likely be fully restored on 30 July.”
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EThekwini Municipality
The following areas will be affected with water outages:
Parts of Shallcross
Klaarwater
St Wendolins
Washington Heights
Parts of Nagina
Intake
Mawelewele
Welbedacht West
Luganda
Parts of Marianhill and
Parts of Queensburgh
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The areas below are impacted by either intermittent supply or poor pressure:
Umlazi- F,G,H,P,N,W and CC sections
Folweni
Nsimbini
Golokodo
Verulam
Ntuzuma and
Inanda
During the week, the Municipality also informed of interruption to the water supply in southern and western areas of Durban due to two major burst pipes on separate trunk mains supplying the Chatsworth 2 reservoir. “As a result of the burst pipes, the reservoir emptied last night, affecting the supply of water to all areas supplied by this reservoir,” eThekwini Municipality said in a statement.
In June, the Municipality introduced an infrastructure levy effective from 1 July. It said the infrastructure levy will be charged at an additional R1. 50/Kl for water and R1. 50/Kl for sewerage disposal. The aim is to upgrade its water and sanitation infrastructure.
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10 things you’re paying a lot more for in South Africa right now
By: Illovuonlinenews
Image: supplied
24-07-2021
Statistics South Africa has published its latest Consumer Price Index (CPI), with annual consumer inflation easing to 4.9% in June after recording a 30-month high of 5.2% in May.
The monthly increase in the consumer price index (CPI) was 0.2% – up from 0.1% in May but lower than the 0.5% rise recorded between May and June 2020, the statistics body said.
“If annual consumer inflation is recalculated with the exclusion of food & NAB (non-alcoholic beverages) and fuel, it comes to 3.4% in June. This is well below the 4.9% headline rate, indicating that these products are important drivers of inflation,” it said.
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Overall food price inflation was at 7.0% year-on-year, Stats SA noted, with transport costs up 12.3%.
Some of the largest annual price increases (June 2020 vs June 2021) were recorded for the following goods and services:
Fuel: +27.5%
Oils and fats: +21.6%
Meat: +8.6%
Fish: +7.0%
Sugar, sweets and desserts: +7.2%
Public transport: +6.9%
Vegetables: +6.7%
Wine: +6.7%
Milk, eggs and cheese: +6.3%
Electricity: +6.2%
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Petrol
The data shows that fuel is one of the biggest contributors to inflation, increasing by 27.5% in June compared to the same month last year.
These relatively high rates come off a low base recorded during the second quarter of 2020 when fuel prices were depressed, StatsSA said.
“On a month-on-month basis, fuel prices dropped by 0.2% between May 2021 and June 2021. The price of inland 95-octane petrol edged lower by 10c a litre in the month. Diesel prices, on the other hand, increased by an average of 0.7%.
“Diesel recorded an annual increase of 25.5% in June, lagging behind petrol’s rise of 28.2%. The average price for a litre of diesel in June was R16.31 per litre”.
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South African motorists are likely to pay even more for petrol in August, with data from the Central Energy Fund pointing to petrol and diesel price pain next month – even before factoring in the damage done by recent riots and looting in KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng.
The CEF data shows a large under-recovery for both petrol and diesel, with data pulled on 20 July pointing to a 78-74 cents per litre hike and a 46-47 cents per litre hike for petrol and diesel, respectively.
Petrol 95: increase of 78 cents per litre;
Petrol 93: increase of 74 cents per litre;
Diesel 0.05%: increase of 47 cents per litre;
Diesel 0.005%: increase of 46 cents per litre;
Illuminating Paraffin: increase of 46 cents per litre.
Impact of looting
South Africans in the major metropoles including Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg can all expect to pay more for water, electricity and other surcharges this month as annual increases take effect.
Economists have also warned that the recent civil unrest and credit rating downgrades for major metropoles are likely to result in an increase in municipal rates and taxes.
Ratings agency Moody’s downgraded five of South Africa’s largest metropolitan municipalities this week, including Cape Town and Johannesburg, citing concerns around liquidity and finances.
As the downgrade will have a direct impact on the finances of these municipalities, this could subsequently be passed onto consumers through higher municipal rates and taxes, said Saveshen Pillay, director at Credit Ratings Analytics.
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“The financial burden of this will obviously have to fall on someone, and it is obviously going to affect the revenue collection abilities.
“If you look at the National Treasury and government, the providing of additional subsidies will likely be quite difficult, so you are then left in the tricky situation of burdening your existing revenue base with higher rates and taxes to obviously cushion the impacts of the riots and looting.”
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News put South Africa first
By illovuonline news 13-02-2021 Image: supplied🇿🇦🌍https://illovuonline.news.blog/ Subscribe 🇿🇦 https://youtu.be/OdKGYUk-5CsA warm to hot Saturday is expected across the country, with disruptive rainfall in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, according to the South African Weather Service. Impact based-warningYellow Level 2 warning: Disruptive rainfall leading to flooding of formal and informal settlements and infrastructure damage, as well as disruptions to main roads, is expected in the north-eastern parts of KwaZulu-Natal, as well as the Mpumalanga Lowveld.The weather in your provinceIt will be partly cloudy and warm in Gauteng.The expected UVB sunburn index is very high.Mpumalanga will be cloudy and cool with isolated to scattered showers and thundershowers, becoming widespread in the Lowveld where it will be warm.In Limpopo, it will be partly cloudy and warm with isolated showers and thundershowers in the western bushveld, otherwise cloudy with scattered showers and thundershowers, but widespread in the south-east.Stay up to date and stay healthy. Subscribe to 🇿🇦🌍https://illovuonline.news.blog/ for important updates on the spread of the coronavirus.#fightcovid-19 #stayhome #flattenthecurve🇿🇦🌍https://illovuonline.news.blog/ Subscribe 🇿🇦 https://youtu.be/OdKGYUk-5CsThe North West will be partly cloudy and warm to hot.In the Free State, it will be partly cloudy and warm to hot with isolated showers and thundershowers in the extreme east.Morning fog patches are expected along the coast in the Northern Cape where it will cool, otherwise partly cloudy and warm to hot with isolated showers and thundershowers.The wind along the coast will be light to moderate southerly to south-easterly, becoming westerly to north-westerly from the afternoon.In the Western Cape, there will be morning fog patches along the west coast, otherwise partly cloudy and warm to hot with isolated showers and thundershowers in the east.The wind along the coast will be moderate to fresh southerly to south-westerly, but easterly to south-easterly along the south coast.The expected UVB sunburn index is extreme.The western half of the Eastern Cape will be partly cloudy and warm to hot with isolated showers and thundershowers.The wind along the coast will be light south-westerly, becoming south-easterly from the afternoon.Conditions in the eastern half of the Eastern Cape will be partly cloudy and warm to hot, becoming cloudy in the south by the evening.The wind along the coast will be light to moderate south-westerly, becoming north-easterly from the afternoon.In KwaZulu-Natal it will be cloudy and cool with isolated to scattered showers and thundershowers, but widespread in the north-east.The wind along the coast will be moderate easterly to south-easterly north of Durban, otherwise north-easterly.🇿🇦🌍https://illovuonline.news.blog/If you haven’t subscribe, Just do it for daily updates: NewsCeleb NewsUpdateCovid-19 NewsSA Newsbusinesses NewsLocal& NationalStay up to date and stay healthy. Subscribe to 🇿🇦🌍https://illovuonline.news.blog/ for important updates on the spread of the coronavirus.#fightcovid-19 #stayhome #flattenthecurve🇿🇦🌍https://illovuonline.news.blog/ Subscribe 🇿🇦 https://youtu.be/OdKGYUk-5CsWe Give You All The Information You Need 🇿🇦🌍 Local & National News put South Africa first
SASSA Grant Payments for the month of November 2020
By: illovuonline news team
29-10-2020
Image: supplied
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SASSA has recently released a payment schedule for the month of November, and are as follows:
Older Person’s Grants will be paid from 3 November 2020 ( Including all other grants that are linked to older person’s grants)
Disability Grants will be paid from 4 November 2020 including any grant linked to these accounts
All other grants will be paid from 5 November 2020
All the top up amounts for the social grants (Old Age, Disability, War Veterans, Child Support, Foster Child and Care Dependency) have come to an end. The grant amounts as from November will revert to pre-covid amounts. There is no extension to the top up amounts.
#SASSACARES
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By: illovuonline news team
08-10-2020
Image: Supplied
WHO director-general says investing in vaccines and political commitment also needed to fight COVID-19
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A vaccine against COVID-19 may be ready by the end of 2020, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday while advocating investment in fighting against the pandemic.
“We will need vaccines, and there is hope that by the end of this year, we may have a vaccine,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus.
He was speaking at the end of a two-day meeting of the organization’s 34-member executive board.
“So, investing in vaccines while implementing the tools we have at hand will be important, and they will give us better results.”
Currently, the WHO-led Covax global vaccine facility has nine experimental vaccines covering 168 countries as it seeks to distribute two billion doses to those who most need them by the end of 2021.
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“The most important thing now is investing in or using all the tools at hand. And many countries have shown that with the tools we have, they were able to suppress and control the pandemic,” said Tedros noting that is why the WHO launched the ACT Accelerator.
COVAX is the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, which is co-led by Gavi, the vaccine alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the WHO.
“The most important tool is political commitment from our leaders, especially in the equitable distribution of the vaccines,” said Tedros.
Earlier Tuesday, the independent panel on COVID-19 announced by Tedros after pressure from countries such as the US submitted its first update.
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After co-chairing the speech, US Assistant Health Secretary Brett Giroir said via video: “The United States appreciates the willingness of the co-chairs, former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark and former President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to lead the Panel.”
The co-chairs said in a document that the independent panel will review experience gained and lessons learned from the WHO’s coordinated international health response to COVID-19.
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These include the effectiveness of the mechanisms and the functioning of the International Health Regulations, among other issues.
On May 29, US President Donald Trump announced that the US was ending its relationship with the WHO following a months-long review he had ordered.
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South Africans can now apply for social grants online – here’s how it works
By: illovuonline news
14-09-2020
Image: Supplied
From Monday (14 September) social grant applicants will be able to apply for certain social grants online, the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) says.
The pilot project will at this stage cover the Child Support, Older Persons, and Foster Child grants and Sassa said that other grants will also be added to the portal after a review process.
“This should be a relief to grant applicants as it will save them the inconvenience of standing in queues at Sassa offices in order to apply for their grants,” the agency said.
“The added advantage is that the convenience of online applications eliminates the risk of being infected with the Covid-19 virus because there will be no need to gather at public places in order to apply.”
“This remote self-service will be possible on both a computer and a mobile phone. The turnaround time is 10 days, provided the applicant supplies all the stipulated documents such as identity documents of applicant and spouse as well as banking details among others.”
Sassa said that users will be able to access the following features online:
Applications for grants for foster child grant, older persons grant and child support grant;
Online submission of the required supporting documentation linked to the application;
Change of circumstances (payment method, banking details, address);
Status of application.
To access this service, applicants need to have an email address to sign up and to be able to login for further services. Feedback to applicants will be sent through SMS notification to applicants with no email addresses and an email response will be sent to applicants choosing to be contacted by email.
A receipt will be generated when the application is completed.
The testing of the system will run from 14 September 2020 till 25 September 2020. It is important to note that required supporting documents to be attached must be certified. These documents should be certified by a commissioner of oaths,” Sassa said.
Sassa said that applications can be lodged on its secure website here. The website was not online at the time of writing.
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News put South Africa first
NASA Discovered a Faster, Cheaper Way of Getting to The Moon… And Patented It
By: illovuonline news team
04-09-2020
Image: supplied
The Moon is both seductively close to Earth and cosmically far away: Decades after the end of the space race, it remains extraordinarily expensive and difficult to actually get there.
The journey just got a bit easier, however, thanks to a freshly published NASA invention.
The agency’s patent doesn’t cover a new piece of equipment or lines of code, but a trajectory – a route designed to save a lunar-bound mission time, fuel, and money, and boost its scientific value.
On June 30, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted and published NASA’s patent for a series of orbital manoeuvres, which Business Insider first learned about via a tweet by a lawyer named Jeff Steck.
The technique isn’t meant for large spaceships that carry astronauts or rovers, but for smaller, more tightly budgeted missions tasked with doing meaningful science.
And the first spacecraft to take advantage of this new orbital path could deliver unprecedented discoveries from the far side of the Moon.
Called the Dark Ages Polarimeter Pathfinder, or Dapper, the upcoming mission aims to record, for the first time, low-frequency radio waves emitted during the earliest epochs of the Universe – when atoms, stars, black holes, and galaxies were just beginning to form, and where scientists may detect the first signals of as-yet-unseen dark matter.
Charting a new budget-friendly path to the Moon
When NASA launched three astronauts to the Moon in 1968, it took the crew just a few days to get there. Such direct shots are expensive, though, requiring an enormous rocket to climb out of Earth’s deep gravity well.
There are far more efficient paths to the Moon that can use smaller rockets – if you have time to spare, which robots do.
By taking time to swing around the Earth, for instance, a spacecraft can steal some of the planet’s momentum and slingshot out to the Moon in a series of long orbits that cost it little to no fuel.
Fuel remains necessary to correct orbits and manoeuvre through space, but every ounce a spacecraft carries is mass that an engineer can’t dedicate toward other components, including scientific instruments.
The calculus is especially tricky for compact spacecraft like Dapper, which would be about the size of a microwave, since there is (quite literally) less margin for error.
Faced with the extra challenge of trying to fly Dapper on a relatively thin US$150 million budget from NASA’s Explorers program, the team behind the mission concept realised they couldn’t buy their own rocket ride all the way to lunar orbit.
“This trajectory to the Moon arose out of necessity, as these things often do,” Jack Burns, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder and leader of the Dapper mission, told Business Insider. “We needed to keep the launch costs low and find a cheap way to get to the Moon.”
They started with a flight they knew they could afford: one to geosynchronous or high-Earth orbit, a region about 22,236 miles from Earth’s equator (about one-tenth of the way to the Moon). It’s a common destination for telecommunications and other satellites built to hover above one spot on the planet. Dapper is small enough to piggyback on such missions.
“If we could just get a launch into high-Earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit, then we could get the rest of the way there with only a modest tank of fuel,” Burns said.
After crunching the numbers, the team found a new low-energy trajectory to the Moon, which their patent describes as a “method for transferring a spacecraft from geosynchronous transfer orbit to lunar orbit.”
It enlists the help of Earth and the Moon’s gravity to speed up and slow down Dapper at the right moments, cutting down on the amount of propellant required.
NASA says this new spin on the gravity assist keeps the flight time to about 2 1/2 months, whereas similar options can take six months.
The trajectory also comes with numerous options to slip a spacecraft into an orbit of any angle around the Moon, at practically any time. And it avoids a zone of radiation around Earth called the Van Allen belts, which can damage sensitive electronics.
Why NASA is patenting and licensing ways to reach the Moon
It may seem odd to patent lunar travel, but Burns said it is really no different from any other invention.
“It’s a creation that was the result of doing numerical modelling of planetary trajectories, he said. “So it is intellectual property.”
NASA patents and licenses inventions to achieve the “widest distribution” of a technology, Dan Lockney, a NASA executive, told IPWatchdog in 2018.
“Securing patents and licensing the technologies is a method NASA and other government agencies use to ensure access to government-funded innovations,” Clare Skelly, a NASA representative, told Business Insider in an email.
The agency charges as much as $US50,000 to licence its patents but typically asks for $US5,000 to $US10,000, plus royalties.
“It is through the upfront fees that NASA seeks to recover some of its investment in the patent filing and maintenance costs,” the agency’s licensing website says.
In other words: Doing the grunt work of patenting and then charging a minimum for that work is a formal and industry-compatible practice of disseminating the fruits of NASA’s labors.
Unofficially, NASA’s scheme also keeps private companies and foreign nations from stockpiling important space technologies for exorbitant sums, and that helps foster American missions and international collaborations. (The agency does occasionally release patents into the public domain.)
Burns said he didn’t believe that NASA will “ever make any money” off the new trajectory patent, since it’s often a matter of historical record-keeping.
“It just is a marker that lays down that this was your intellectual property – you did this, and you were the creator of it – so that at least when people use it, they give credit,” he said.
2 Nobel Prizes may await in the lunar ‘cone of silence’
Dapper’s goal is to study the Universe from a “cone of silence” on the far side of the Moon. In that solitary region, humanity’s cacophony of wireless emissions can’t interfere with antennas trying to pick up weak, low-frequency emissions from more than 13 billion years ago.
“This is the only truly radio-quiet region in the inner solar system,” Burns said.
Humanity’s pollution of radio waves – which leak out of almost every electronic device – can easily bend around corners and over horizons (so erecting barriers to block them is fruitless). “In order to get the same amount of quiet, you’d have to go out past the orbit of Jupiter, and go that far out in order for the noise just from Earth.”
Specifically, the mission seeks to detect radio emissions of the “neutral hydrogen” that dominated the very early Universe. The cosmos produced the nuclei, or cores, of these first-ever atoms within a microsecond of the Big Bang; the event’s dense, hot soup of energy had expanded and cooled off, permitting protons, neutrons, and electrons to form.
About 380,000 years later, that particle soup had cooled off further, allowing the positively charged protons to capture negatively charged electrons and become neutrally charged hydrogen atoms.
The phase is often called the “Dark Ages” because, in visible wavelengths of light, a human wouldn’t have seen anything.
“There’s no stars. There’s no galaxies. There’s no other source of radiation. So how do you probe that part of the Universe?” Burns said. “You use the one thing that you’ve got a lot of, which is neutral hydrogen.”
The problem is that those radio signals, which reach Earth in the 10-to-100-megahertz range, not only are scrambled by our planet’s atmosphere, but match the emissions of countless power supplies, garage-door openers, radio transmitters, space satellites, digital TV signals, and more.
“The radio spectrum down at these frequencies? It’s just absolutely filled with garbage,” Burns said.
Even in space, there’s so much interference from humanity and the Sun that the radio-equivalent temperature around Earth is “nearly a million degrees,” Burns said.
By slipping behind the Moon at a moment when the sun is blocked as well as the Earth, Dapper is expected to make the first clear recordings of a neutral hydrogen signal. The spacecraft might also gather evidence of the first stars, and possibly the first black holes and galaxies that formed about 500 million years after the Big Bang, during an epoch called “Cosmic Dawn.”
And maybe – just maybe – the spacecraft could turn up the first direct detection of dark matter, which makes up about 80 percent of the mass in the Universe but has yet to be identified.
For the researchers that successfully pull off such a mission, two Nobel Prizes in science could await.
“One is you’re detecting when the first stars and galaxies form and what they are. And No. 2, you’re detecting dark matter,” said Burns, who pooh-poohed the idea of winning any such prize himself.
The race to the early-Universe radio emissions is on
Burns and others came up with the Dark Ages Radio Explorer lunar mission about 10 years ago, which is why that mission and not Dapper is described in the patent, which NASA filed in 2015. (The USPTO is a notoriously slow-moving federal organ.)
Burns said that while NASA was excited about DARE – no one had ever done something like it before – the agency was bound by rules that favoured established science and hardware over newer approaches.
“There is no history of low-frequency experiments in space. So, on the one side, people are excited: ‘Wow, you’re opening up an entire new field of cosmology. This is great. This is fantastic. You need to do it,'” Burns said. “The other side is, ‘Well, you’ve never done it before, so it must be risky.’ And so you get marked down for the risks.”
After years of being passed up, Burns and his colleagues decided to shrink the car-size spacecraft, ditch novel hardware for proven “heritage” technologies, and try again.
The gambit appears to be working. NASA has awarded Dapper a few million dollars to prove out the concept and mature its hardware design to a flight-ready state over the next two years.
When that work concludes, Dapper would have a good chance of getting NASA’s full funding to build the spacecraft and book a rocket ride, possibly from SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin, or some other provider. (Burns said the mission is estimated to cost about $US70 million, plus the price of a launch.)
Burns isn’t sure the mission will require the new patent to reach lunar orbit anymore. In the years since his team came up with it, commercial rocket providers have started planning launches to the Moon. NASA is also working toward the launch of its massive Space Launch System rocket, which could easily carry Dapper on a flight in the mid-2020s.
“The possible ways to get there have widened considerably since this orbital trajectory was first designed,” Burns said.
But time is growing short. There’s a push to land humans (and their noisy electronics) at the Moon’s poles, including an effort by China.
That nation’s space agency has also landed spacecraft on the lunar far side, where its robots are exploring the surface for the first time.
“Given how simple we have made the Dapper instrument now, a lot of people could build it. A lot of countries, even individual companies, could build this,” Burns said. “Every so often I see a paper coming out of China with my figures in it, and they’re talking about their own mission.”
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It’s only 20 minutes to risk infection in a fully loaded taxi – even with a face mask
By: illovuonline news team
14-07-2020
Image: Supplied
The government has given the taxi industry the green light to increase its loading capacity up to 100%.
An expert has warned that commuters spending more than 20 minutes in a fully loaded taxi, without proper ventilation, are at risk of being infected with Covid-19 even if they wear a face mask.
In fact, if you spend more than 20 minutes in a taxi loaded to 100% capacity, you risk being infected with any contagious disease, Dr Angelique Coetzee, president of the SA Medical Association (Sama), told illovuonline news team on Tuesday.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Sunday that taxis would be permitted to increase their capacity to 100% while undertaking local trips
Long-distance taxis, however, would be allowed to load only to 70% of capacity.
After recent evidence indicating the airborne spread of the virus, Coetzee said the onus was on the taxi industry to open all windows while transporting commuters.
Coetzee said “all literature” showed that contact time should not be more than 20 minutes in proximity to others to avoid being infected with Covid-19.
“If I am a commuter in a taxi for less than 20 minutes with all the windows open, I am less likely to get infected.
“But, if I am sitting like a sardine in a fully loaded taxi for more than 20 minutes, I am more likely to get infected.
“This virus is not there to negotiate, this virus is saying stay within close proximity for more than 20 minutes of me, and I will show you.”
Coetzee said the government should look at other transport measures.
While the taxi industry is happy that the government is allowing 100% passenger capacity on local trips, that came with responsibility in terms of compliance, said SA National Taxi Council (Santaco) national spokesperson Thabiso Molelekwa.
Molelekwa said the council met stakeholders on Monday evening to discuss the way forward.
He said all commuters were urged to sanitise and wear face masks before boarding taxis.
Molelekwa said the industry would also introduce “window stoppers” that will be fitted to all taxis.
These would effectively provide a 5cm gap for ventilation, he said.
He said at a previous meeting with the department of transport that the government had indicated that it would look at ways of funding these window stoppers. But this had not been confirmed, he added.
“We have agreed collectively that these are issues that we will continue to deal with. We have also decided that we need to have a campaign that will be ongoing on the ground and on the road to monitor the compliance of drivers.
“Every taxi on the road with commuters – all must wear masks. If that is not the case, that taxi’s trip will be interrupted so that we can take measures against the driver and send a strong message that compliance is necessary.”
He said an urgent meeting will be arranged with the department of transport.
Transport department spokesperson Ayanda Allie Paine could not immediately be reached but minister Fikile Mbalula posted a tweet indicating that the department was working with the taxi industry.
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