City Press reports that taxi drivers have expressed the sentiment that, if the government was able to give them free condoms, it should now provide them with free masks, “at a time when our health is clearly in imminent danger”.  

Tete Masete, a taxi driver at Wanderers taxi rank in the Johannesburg CBD, said:  “I don’t earn enough money to buy masks. In fact, I don’t even know where I would buy masks if I had to. Where do people buy these masks?”  But, while he advocates the free distribution of masks, Moduki believes he is immune to the virus, saying “I am young and eat healthily.”  Yet, Moduki admits that like many commuters and taxi operators around Noord taxi rank and Wanderers, his knowledge of Covid-19 is limited because “there aren’t enough awareness campaigns about it available to us”.  He went on to say:  “I don’t really know the symptoms or what else can help besides the masks, but I know there is a coronavirus and that people can get it by just breathing.  But we are taxi drivers, we work with people. I drive a taxi full of people to Limpopo for six hours, and we breathe the same air. We could be coughing the whole six hours.”  Other men at the taxi rank said they knew more about HIV and Aids than Covid-19 and that the latter was more dangerous.  With the taxi rank abuzz on a daily basis with talk of the fear of contracting Covid-19, masks would seem to be appropriate to ask of government, especially in the absence of proper ablution facilities, which could be increasing the risks.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Palesa Dlamini on page 8 of City Press of 15 March 2020

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