Over 90 percent of restaurants in Cape Town have complied with the tobacco laws by incorporating a separate section for smokers inside their establishments, but health authorities are still not satisfied.
Head of city health, Ivan Toms, said a group of health officials had in the last year embarked on intense inspections of public restaurants to assess whether city establishments had attempted to comply with anti-smoking laws by making arrangements for smoking sections.
"The situation is much better than last year. We expected to find about 10 percent of establishments in the city to have not made the necessary changes. But I am happy to say that we have issued spot fines to a mere three percent."
Toms said fines were not issued to those who said they were "in the process of making arrangements" and others who said they were awaiting council plans to be approved before they could start renovating.
But he said the problem was that the inspections usually took place during the day when restaurant patrons could make use of the available outside facilities to smoke.
"But at night it is usually much colder and patrons do not sit outside. They then take it upon themselves to smoke inside. And that is when the complaints are made by individuals.
"But we are sometimes unable to do inspections at night.
Although we do have a complaints line that is open 24 hours a day, the messages usually only get checked the next morning."
The health ministry proposed tougher anti-smoking legislation, including a dramatic increase in fines, last month. It is seeking to ban cigarette vending machines, to raise the age for tobacco sales from 16 to 18 and to make graphic pictures of smoking diseases part of health warnings on packets.
Special adviser to Health Minister Manto Tshabala-Msimang, Patricia Lambert, earlier said she hoped a draft bill would be published before the end of the month and that it would be law by the end of the year.
She said the bill would tighten the existing Tobacco Products Control Act's provision on smoking in public places, a clause which Western Cape director of public prosecutions Frank Kahn last year refused to prosecute under, stating it was sloppily drafted and did not define an offence. Lambert said the clause would be rewritten.
Toms said magistrates were not taking the smoking offences seriously and "probably thought it was petty. I think they feel that those cases are a waste of time".
Kahn was not available for comment on Wednesday.
However, Lambert said on Wednesday that all the proposals were still being discussed and had not yet been finalised.