Bay firm steps in to help commuters feel safe

Everybody deserves to feel safe.

That is the view of Kevin Kelly, owner of Xtreme Projects, who donated his services to disinfect the Strand Street taxi rank on Tuesday morning in efforts to stem the spread of coronavirus.

Earlier on Tuesday,  transport MEC Weziwe Tikana was out and about at Bay taxi ranks showing drivers best practices when it came to disinfecting their taxis.  

Kelly said he felt that his company — a 24-hour emergency spill response firm — should play a role in stemming the pandemic.  

“Everyone needs to feel safe [and] we felt cleaning the taxi rank would help to control the spreading of the virus, to a degree.

“The product we’re using to disinfect is Nobac quatrodet. We bought the chemicals here in Port Elizabeth at Westchem and all our chemicals are approved.

“Last month, we donated 50l to the taxi rank. It can be watered down for taxi operators to disinfect their taxis before people board, wait for a minute before they board, and when people disembark.”

Kelly said his team enjoyed being in the front line, and saluted everybody else playing a role.

Tikana said  at the Njoli taxi rank: “Throughout the province we will be educating people, distributing gloves, masks and sanitisers to taxi and bus operators.

“They will educate passengers and they will use the sanitisers on the passengers.

“Drivers will wear the masks because we cannot distribute masks to all passengers in the province.”

Tikana said drivers should advise people to disclose if they had any symptoms in order for people who had a cough to be given masks.

She warned public transport operators that should they be caught carrying more than the regulated number of people they would be fined R10,000.

South African Council of Taxis Eastern Cape provincial secretary Mthuthuzeli Madwara said they felt liberated as the equipment they were given would help to protect their passengers.

Madwara said their livelihoods depended upon passengers and although they felt the equipment hand-over was long overdue, they were grateful it had finally arrived.

“We hope the department of transport will come back again. There are few people, for now, so the real challenge will be after the lockdown.

“That is when we will need to disinfect the taxis the most, because we will have bigger numbers of people who will be using the taxis.”