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Gauteng Transport MEC Jacob Mamabolo visited the Bara Taxi Rank in Soweto on Monday where a new walk-through sanitising pod was tested.
It sprays a water-based organic chemical that helps kill the virus for up to four hours.
"Today we're looking at how to scale up, improve and reinforce our activities [to curb the spread of Covid-19] and that is why we were piloting those measures today, and the pilot will run up until the end of May," Mamabolo said on Monday.
The sanitisation pod also has a temperature scanner, which measures a person's body temperature as they walk through.
The MEC said they are still considering whether or not to roll out the pods to other taxi ranks around the province.
IN TWEETS | Coronavirus: Walk-in sanitation tunnels launched at Bara Taxi Rank
"We got sanitising booths to pilot them at Bara, and one thing we have seen is that we have not made a conclusion as yet," he said.
"Just from what I saw, the taxi rank infrastructure is not good to introduce that level of technology because people just enter [wherever] and there's no proper entrance. So a sanitising booth in a taxi rank environment - we need to think about it carefully," he said.
The MEC told News24 that they were not as vigilant with how people were controlled in the space during lockdown Level 5.
Demarcations for social distancing
But now, under Level 4, they have ensured that there are distinct demarcations for social distancing. Drivers are equipped with masks and gloves and ensure commuters are sanitised before entering a taxi or bus.
"The third area of improvement that we were not doing was taking control of commuting patterns. In a taxi rank, commuting happens on its own. Now we want commuting to be controlled, to be overseen and monitored by the enforcement committee," he said.
"We are appointing and formalising taxi rank enforcement committees across the province, which are led by taxi rank managers. The purpose of the committee is to enforce basic health and hygiene at taxi ranks - sanitising of commuters, disinfecting vehicles and also making sure of social distancing and to make sure we do everything to combat the spread of Covid-19," he explained.
"We don't want these activities to be left to chance because we saw with Level 5 that the taxi industry was doing them, but not doing them properly."
After the visit to the Bara Taxi Rank, the MEC inspected the Putco bus services depot in Dobsonville, Soweto, where he told News24 that he was pleased with the safety measures the bus company, subsidised by the department, had implemented.
Putco's group operations executive Jack Sekwaila told News24 they have ensured social distancing is enforced by clearly marking certain seats on each bus with an X so that people don't sit next to each other.
Buses are also disinfected at least twice a day before every trip.
"We have issued our drivers with sanitisers, to sanitise passengers as and when they board the bus. In addition to that, our drivers are equipped with masks. So, our buses are compliant with the measures that have been put in place by the government," Sekwaila said.
