For the first time in two months, Taxis are back on the roads. The Kampala capital city released route numbers on Wednesday, June 3 to be followed by commuters.

But in many ways, it’s not business as usual.

“All parks shall have health officers attached to monitor enforcement of the standard operating procedures (SOPs) from the ministry of health. They will follow different routes as issued by the Kampala capital city Authority (KCCA),” Hon. Betty Amongin, Minister for Kampala said while addressing Journalists at the Uganda media centre on Wednesday, June 3.

Passengers will have their temperatures checked before entering the taxis. Every passenger must have a face masks before boarding the commuters. Passengers are to sit 4 meters away from each other in line with commonplace social distancing practices.

The drivers and passengers are expected to adjust to the new normal as they hit the road again.

Drivers were crying foul after several of them failed to make it to the mandatory registration of their taxis as a result of the snail process involved in the registration of taxis at KCCA.

Amongi said in the case of taxis, they have so far gazetted 66 stages, including parks and 137 routes while for bodabodas, they have mapped out 970 stages and proposed gazetting 585 in the five divisions in the first phase.

Addressing the issue of the new high taxi fares, the minister said that the authority has less powers to stop the taxi drivers since they will be transporting a handful of passengers.

“The major concern is that they will be operating at half capacity with the same fuel and same cost. They came out with their own schedule of fares based on the cost,” Amoningin said.

Government grounded movement of all public means on Tuesday, March, 30 just a few days after Uganda had just registered her first case of the novel COVID-19 disease.