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Some Soweto residents still not adhering to safety protocols amid COVID-19 third wave

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While the Gauteng province is experiencing a third wave of COVID-19 infections, some residents in Soweto, are still not adhering to safety protocols.

Johannesburg Mayor Geoff Makhubo urged residents to adhere to all COVID-19 regulations to prevent the devastating impact that could come with the third wave.

Makhubo was speaking in Eldorado Park on Saturday.

His call comes as some of the boys in Diepkloof Zone 5, Soweto, sit on the street corner and take turns to sip on two beer bottles amongst the four of them. They sit on the streets without wearing masks. There is also no social distancing.

Some residents walk on the busy Chris Hani Baragwanath road without masks, as taxis hoot for their attention.

In Kliptown and Eldorado Park SABC News saw some residents walking around without masks.

Some of the residents who wear their masks in public say others act like there is no COVID-19.

“All that we must do is just keep safe, sanitise, wear our masks and social distance. They do seem less scared now because with the first wave, everybody was in the house and now people walk around with no masks. They don’t care, they are taking it lightly this time,” one resident told the SABC News crew.

Yolanda Watkins says they are unable to adhere to COVID-19 rules, because of overcrowding and congestion in the area.

Watkins says she worries about children who attend school in the area.

“The school in Klipspruit was non-functional. They took the kids from Klipspruit high, dumped them in one class with Kliptown senior school. They were in excess of 50, they were like 60 matriculants breathing on top of each other. Our houses, those squatter camps that they have inside the backyards, it is crowded it is congested. So how are they going to keep this third wave from us, how are they going to control it? Because our people are living on top of each other so if an illness has to breakout here, God help us all,” she says.

Community leader Keith Duarte says they have raised the issue of overcrowding and lack of adequate housing with the government, but they were ignored.

“We have 4/5 generations staying in one house. We have posed this to government, we asked the city of Johannesburg, how can we maintain social distance if we are congested like this. City of Johannesburg came up with a programme during COVID-19, they call it the temporally relocation unit and they will put up containers and move our people out of that. Till today, we are in level 1, they have not come back to us. But they have moved other communities out of their areas,” he adds.

Meanwhile, Johannesburg Mayor Geoff Makhubo says the inner-city is one of the epicentres of COVID-19 in Gauteng, and therefore more isolation sites have been opened to prepare for the third wave.

Situation in Joburg as COVID-19 third wave infections sweep through the Gauteng province:

 

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