Emmanuel Ainebyoona Says that the quarantine centers to be closed soon
Government is set to close COVID-19 quarantine centres once passengers who flew into the country before October 1 complete their required 14-day stay.
Ministry of Health senior public relations officer, Emmanuel Ainebyoona says everyone who will be coming into the country will now be required to present a COVID-19 negative test certificate at the airport and then proceed to their destination.
Ainebyoona who was responding to complaints raised in a video shared on Twitter by a group of women who claim to be stuck at Douglas Villa hostel, one of the quarantine centres, said those that had already arrived earlier than Thursday, have to complete their mandatory duration and then the facility will be closed.
Although he couldn’t reveal the total number of people currently under institutional quarantine in different facilities, he said the women seen in the footage complaining arrived from Dubai.
In the video, the women claim to have paid Shs 850,000 for quarantine with the promise that they will be secluded and monitored for COVID-19 symptoms until the elapse of their quarantine. However, instead, they say they were sharing rooms and not given anything to sanitize in addition to sharing washrooms which are often very dirty.
Dr Richard Mugahi, who is the ministry’s officer in charge of quarantine centres couldn’t pick his calls or respond to his texts to verify these claims and give details of how many people remain under quarantine. However, this is not the first time that Douglas Villa is put on the spot over filth and release of people before elapse of quarantine duration.
Early last month, URN spoke to a group of other women who had arrived from Jordan that had been released from the facility before the end of duration yet they had paid the full amount for quarantine and flight fees all consolidated at $727 which was a condition for everyone to be scheduled to be repatriated back.
The women said they had been asked to go home to give space to new returnees that had just arrived and crowded the facility.
