Maputo bans use of pick-up truck for passenger transport – AIM report

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Maputo bans use of pick-up truck for passenger transport – AIM report

12:41 CAT | 12 Feb 2021

Photo: Noticias

Maputo Municipal Council has outlawed the use of pick-up trucks and similar open vehicles to transport passengers, as part of the measures to halt the spread of the Covid-19 respiratory disease.

Pick-up trucks carrying dozens of passengers packed tightly together have become a common sight on Maputo streets, and are known, ironically as “My loves”.

Speaking on Wednesday, the Mayor of Maputo, Eneas Comiche, said the ban will be in force until at least 6 March.

Comiche added that, in order to enforce the curfew in the Greater Maputo Metropolitan Area, under which nobody should be on the streets between 21.00 and 04.00, the last bases from the terminals, going from central Maputo to the city suburbs, or vice versa, must leave by 20.10.

Passengers on planes that arrive at Maputo airport after 21.00 may use their ticket or their boarding pass to explain to the police why they are on the streets in the hours of curfew.

As for the three-wheeler taxis, known as “txopelas”, Comiche said they must carry no more than one passenger at a time.

The police have now started to blockade the main access roads into the city, so that nobody can enter Maputo after 21.00. They are telling motorists who are caught by the curfew that they will have to sleep in their cars.

Comiche also reminded municipal citizens of the rules in force for funerals. Any funeral for people who died from Covid-19 must be held in the Michafutene cemetery on the outskirts of the city. Such funerals must be held between 07.30 and 17.00, and may not be attended by more than ten people.

Markets may open from 06.00 to 17.00 on weekdays and Saturday, and from 06.00 to 12.00 on Sundays. The police are once again trying to remove informal vendors from the city’s pavements, where they hinder the normal passage of pedestrians and become a vector for disease. Comiche said the municipal police have received orders to expel the informal sellers from the downtown area of the capital, near the port of Maputo.

Despite the mayor’s orders, pick-up trucks full of passengers were filmed circulating in Maputo, as normal, on Thursday morning.

Reporters for the independent television station STV noted that in the municipal markets, many of the taps installed last year so that clients can wash their hands are no longer operational, and the bus terminals are full of people who are not making the slightest attempt to exercise social distancing.

Source: AIM