Fedhasa joins growing calls to end state of disaster

The Federated Hospitality Association of Southern Africa (Fedhasa) has joined the growing chorus for the government  to lift the national state of disaster as President Cyril Ramaphosa prepares to deliver his annual state of the nation address on Thursday.

Businesses, lobby groups and some scientists say the wide-ranging powers granted to to government are stifling economic growth. However, other experts, government officials and the World Health Organisation have warned of possible future waves of Covid-19 and that lifting all restrictions would be premature. 

The national state of disaster, which was proclaimed on March 15 2020, gives the government wide-ranging powers to impose a raft of measures to curb the spread of Covid-19, including lockdowns, curfews restrictions on indoor and outdoor gatherings, international travel, and the sale of alcohol .without parliamentary oversight.

“The hospitality sector has largely borne the brunt of ... lockdown regulations in terms of business closures and job losses, despite putting in place stringent health and hygiene protocols,” said Fedhasa chair Rosemary Anderson.

“It is our view, based on the current profile of the pandemic in SA, that the centralisation of these extraordinary powers is no longer required and that individual departments should once again be tasked with the role of providing an enabling environment for businesses to flourish.”

For the tourism and hospitality sectors this includes improving SA’s visibility and accessibility for international visitors through a proper e-visa system and an additional budget for tourism marketing to restore the country’s reputation after the damaged caused by the Omicron variant at the end of 2021, Anderson said.

“Temporary waivers should be considered for key markets and segments and a best-of-breed, world-class, fully automated e-visa [system] should be instituted to replace the manual processing that currently takes place. Otherwise we will fall further behind our competitors. It is far too difficult for some of our key source markets to get visas,” she said

The window of opportunity to raise the profile of SA as a destination is closing as Australia, SA’s largest long-haul competitor, has announced it will reopen its international borders soon.

“The destination’s tourism marketing budget was reduced during Covid-19 and compares poorly with the tourism budgets of competitor destinations,” Anderson said. “Additional funds for tourism marketing would help ... undo some of the damage caused by Omicron in 2021.”

She said there were several quick wins that would allow tourism to bounce back faster and create the hundreds of thousands of jobs that SA desperately needs, The include:

• fixing the dysfunctional tourism vehicle licensing process, which has been delayed for several years; and
• resolving the liquor board stalemate, which has caused liquor licensing issues.

“Red tape and dysfunctional institutions need to be transformed into agile, professionally run entities which create an enabling environment for tourism and hospitality to do what it does best: create jobs. These measures will go some way to help tourism deliver on its promise as SA’s new gold, Mr President.”

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