By Adedoyin Falolu
Owing to the new strain of virus in the United Kingdom,(UK) and South Africa(SA),the Federal Government has slammed fresh travel requirements on passengers coming into the country from the UK and SA with effect from Monday.
Dr Sani Aliyu,the National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 disclosed this at the PTF’s briefing in Abuja on Thursday, said penalties including passport or visa suspension for at least six months would be imposed on violators.
Aliyu said the passport numbers of the first 100 violators of international travel protocols would be published by the weekend.
He said the imposition of fresh travel requirements on passengers from the two countries was as a result of the emergence of new strain of the virus in the UK and South Africa.
He said, “There are new traveling requirements for people traveling from the UK and South Africa effective from 0001 hours on Monday, December 28, 2020.
“It is the responsibility of those passengers to make sure they familiarise themselves with these new rules, and airlines will be informed accordingly.”
Aliyu explained that international passengers were generally required to visit the Nigerian international travel portal to upload their negative COVID PCR result, generate a Permit to Travel document, also referred to as the QR Code, and also pay for the second PCR COVID test that would be conducted on them by their seventh day of arrival in the country.
He said in addition to these, a special register would be open for UK and South African passengers to enhance their tracking by the government on their arrival to the country.
He said, “We will open a special register at the airport for all passengers arriving from these two countries.
“We will have an enhanced surveillance so that these passengers will be contacted after they have arrived home.
“We will be checking on them to see if they are having symptoms.
“But even more importantly by the 7th day, we expect these passengers just like any other passengers coming from outside the country to unfailingly go for COVID PCR test which you must have paid for before boarding the aircraft.”
He said the President, Muhammadu Buhari, had at the meeting with the PTF members on Tuesday approved the penalties for the violators of the protocols and that special attention would be paid to “those coming from the UK and South Africa”.
He said, “If you do not do your test on the 7th day of arrival and latest by the 10th day, you will automatically go on to the suspension list and your travel documents, your passport will be suspended for a minimum period of six months.
“If you carry a foreign passport with a visa, we will revoke your visa. And because it is easier to track a smaller group of persons than a large number of passengers which has always been the challenge that we have, we are now able to enforce this specifically for passengers coming from these routes until further notice.”
He said the same penalties would be meted out to “people presenting fake PCR results at our airports when exiting or if they have found to have presented a fake COVID 19 PCR result on arrival”.
On the publication of the list of the passport numbers of violators of the protocols, Aliyu said, “In addition to this, over this weekend we will publish the first list of 100 Nigerian passport numbers that will be suspended for six months.
“We have already contacted the passengers and we have confirmed that they have not had their COVID PCR test.
“We will not be publishing names but we will publish the passport numbers and we asking from now on, people that are traveling should make sure they abide by our protocols because there will be repercussions if you don’t in terms of penalties.”