More than a week ago, President Ramaphosa announced that the country was moving to adjusted level four lockdown, which included a ban on domestic leisure travel in and out of Gauteng. These regulations were introduced to contain the spread of rising COVID-19 infections, which are particularly high in Gauteng. However, local airlines report that representatives of government departments have not collected or looked at these completed forms, so it appears that government is not carrying out any checks on travellers moving between provinces by air.
A high-ranking representative of one domestic carrier, who did not wish to be named, told Travel News that lockdown regulations in relation to travel restrictions had been consistently written up in a sloppy and unclear manner and this was causing a lot of confusion in the market. This tended to make travellers nervous to fly, or travel at all.
“The adjusted level four regulations that were released this week were very unclear regarding what travel was permissible for residents of Gauteng. They were also riddled with typos and while the regulations state that there are eight valid reasons that allow people to lawfully travel in and out of Gauteng, the government has only released permit templates for three of these options. And, in the instance of one of the templates, the reason for travel mentioned in the document heading differs to the reason for travel detailed in the wording of the document,” he explained.
The airline representative went on to note that although a week had passed since the regulations had been announced, no authorities had started checking permits yet.
“Travellers are moving in and out of Gauteng airports without any permit checks taking place. There seems to have been no co-ordination between government and the relevant authorities about how these regulations are to be enforced. When we have made contact with various organisations on this, everyone has washed their hands of the matter. Port Health representatives, who were responsible for checking travel permits during 2020 for instance, have told us that the permits have nothing to do with them and only apply to travellers entering or leaving Gauteng by road,” he explained.
Ceo of CemAir, Miles van der Molen, said there had been continual issues with alignment between presidential regulation announcements, the written regulations and the various departmental regulations since lockdown began. This was further exacerbated by government authorities interpreting the various regulations in different ways.
“As a result of the confusion over the regulations, the public tend to make speculative interpretations and decisions, often opting not to travel for fear of running into issues with authorities or of finding themselves stranded if more restrictions are introduced, with no warning by the government,” said Miles.
LIFT’s head of commercial, Cilliers Jordaan, said there had been a lot of confusion in the market relating to how the new adjusted level four regulations should be interpreted. He also confirmed that LIFT had not had sight of any government personnel checking the various permits that were now required to travel in and out of Gauteng.
“This places airlines, who are not official regulator enforcers, in a difficult position when we are contacted by clients trying to determine whether they may or may not travel,” said Cilliers. LIFT announced this week that it would cancel all its flights from July 5-31 in light of the impact of the new regulations on domestic travel.
Travel News contacted the Department of Transport for further information about the permits but had not received a response at time of publication.
