Hospitality industry cheers lifting of state of disaster

The Federated Hospitality Association of SA (Fedhasa) has welcomed the government’s lifting of the state of disaster but called for the urgent removal of the PCR test requirement for unvaccinated children between the ages of five and 12.

While President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement meant an end to many rules, such as temperature checking and contact tracing, the PCR test for unvaccinated children “is damaging inbound family travel to SA as well as hindering SA families from travelling”, said chair Rosemary Anderson.

According to regulations announced last month, only children under the age of five are exempt from having to furnish either a vaccination certificate or negative PCR test to travel to SA.

The issue, said Fedhasa, lies in that many countries do not offer vaccinations to children between five and 12 years, and neither does SA.

“This means even if parents are fully vaccinated, a family with children aged between five and 12 years has no choice but to pay for PCR tests, which we know in certain countries like the UK is not only onerous, but also expensive,” said Anderson.

In the UK, one of SA’s largest source markets, it can cost as much as £150 (about R3,000) for a PCR test issued within 12 hours because most clinics are located in major centres.

“So, unless you live in a major centre, a family wanting to travel to SA has to leave home a day early and incur the additional cost of a night in a hotel and then bear the additional worry that their travel plans will be derailed entirely if their child tests positive. This doesn’t make sense when SA’s regulations state that if you are Covid positive, yet asymptomatic, there is no need to self-isolate.”

Anderson said SA being red-listed by other countries at the end of last year, caused untold damage to the tourism and hospitality sector and job losses.

“A few months later and it would appear we’re scoring an own goal by precluding families with children between the age of five and 12 from visiting SA because of this inconvenient rule.

“As we enter a new post-pandemic era, we have learnt the importance of meaningful engagement and hope that the government sees the benefit thereof.

“We genuinely want to establish a partnership with government to develop a plan on how to grow the tourism industry, market the destination and create thousands of new jobs — the tourism industry being a key potential driver of the economy and job creation.

“Government also needs to realise that hospitality and tourism are being stymied by government policies, inefficiencies and red tape such as the slow processing of licences,” Anderson said, adding that was the biggest obstacle to growing the tourism industry and creating new jobs.

TimesLIVE