Tourism Minister Godfrey Kiwanda has come out to clarify that there was no influence-peddling as earlier alleged in hiring Hotels as quarantine centers when government planned to combat COVID-19 pandemic.
Cabinet sitting on Monday 16th March 2020 had in a pre-emptive move also decided to as well bar Ugandans from travelling to or through class 1 affected countries. Foreigners intending to travel to these countries, would not be stopped but they wouldn’t be allowed to travel back to Uganda within 32 days. Travelers from those countries were also banned from travelling to Uganda for 32 days.
At the time, Uganda had not registered a single case of COVID-19 although Kenya and Rwanda had begun to register some cases. Nonetheless- the country had already gone into a frenzy- trying to manage and be on the lookout for potential suspect cases from among 2,000 international daily arrivals on about 40 planes.
For Hon Kiwanda Godfrey the State Tourism Minister whose job it was to identify the hotels to host the quarantined guests- a small nightmare was beginning to brew, but in his words, worth going through, because it felt good being of service a time his country needed him most.
“Whereas a government decision had been made to allow in international travelers but quarantine them their own cost, we faced a several major challenges. Most of the people who came back had lost jobs in the Middle East and had no money. From the airport, most wanted to be taken home- they would refuse to board transport arrange for them or refuse to get out whenever we reached the hotels we had arranged for them. Yet we wouldn’t let them go back to their homes. We were stuck, some people even spent nights at the airport,” recalls Hon Kiwanda, who is also the chairman of the national taskforce on non-medical logistics.
But there was an even a bigger problem- because of the ignorance and therefore stigma around the disease, most hotels were refusing to accept suspected Covid-19 patients.
“We had to call the Uganda Hotel Owners Association (UHOA), to assist us identify which hotels were willing to accommodate us. Most hotels we called were scared because at the time, everyone was scared about the disease. Everyone thought that anyone coming from abroad, especially the Middle East had the disease. It was a very big challenge,” Kiwanda recalls.
After confirming the first case and a couple of more cases the next day, Uganda, on March 23rd at midnight, closed all her air, water, and land entry points. By now, the number of flagged high-risk travellers, had risen to 2,661. Out of these 1,356 were being followed up while 1,305 had completed their 14-day quarantine. The pressure for accommodation was also mounting yet, there were a few hotel owners willing to accept suspects Covid-19 cases to be quarantined at their hotels.
900 rooms in 30 minutes
Thank God, a few days earlier, Hon. Kiwanda had called in the help of Uganda Hotel Owners Association (UHOA) Executive Director, Jean Byamugisha to help. But even then for her it wasn’t that easy.
“You will remember from the very beginning, people fought being quarantined especially at their own cost, because they said it was expensive. Hotels too were not willing to come up because they were afraid of stigma and there were no Standard Operating Procedures for hotels then,” says Ms. Byamugisha.
“The one hotel I called upon and they immediately accepted hosting suspected Covid-19 cases, you saw how much heat they took from social media- people accused them of being abanene mu government (well connected). Honestly that gentleman of Central Inn was completely innocent- I am the one who called him and begged him,” she adds.
“I remember Hon Kiwanda called me to appear before the Covid-19 National Taskforce Committee and they needed 900 rooms in a period of 30 minutes. It was me who was making calls and following up on rooms, begging and pleading and asking hotels but most were hesitant,” she says.
Kiwanda narrates how he and his team had to plead, beg and negotiate with hotel owners- first to allow the Covid-19 suspected cases, but also negotiate for discounts because government could not afford the USD100 (UGX370,000) that most hotels were asking for per guest yet the government budget was around UGX150,000-UGX200,000.
“We were stuck- people were not willing to pay to be quarantined. Most hotel owners were reluctant to let in suspected patients and yet the numbers were growing. We had nothing to do as government, we couldn’t leave them in the cold, we had a decision to make,” he says.
“I remember one night, we went to Entebbe Botanical Hotel, but the owner called the management and refused us to be admitted. Even the team of the Chinese who were in the papers, who eventually went to an apartment in Naguru, we first took them to Mr. Karim Hirji’s Hotel in Entebbe, but he insisted that he wanted USD100 per person per night but he also insisted that if we were to put the 20 Chinese in his hotel, we should pay for 100 rooms, because he was not going to admit anyone else at the hotel, if he let in the Covid-19 suspected cases- that is how they ended up in Naguru,” he says.
He also narrates of another ordeal at Metropole Hotel in Kampala, where he was left in the called with 80 suspected Covid-19 patients, yet most Entebbe hotels were full and most public Schools in Entebbe had refused completely to let in guests.
“I remember, we were supposed to take people to Metropole Hotel in Kampala. That time we had over 80 people. We had agreed with the management of the hotel but at around midnight in the night, we drove the buses from the airport and when we reached, Metropoloe, the owner of the hotel, called the manager and refused the people to enter the hotel,” explains Kiwanda.
“That was the time we resolved to talk to Nyumbani Hotel, because we knew it belonged to Hon Frank Tumwebaze, and we knew we could talk to him. It was late, we couldn’t put these people in the cold and we had been refused entry to the hotel we had booked. It was very difficult at that time to be accepted by anyone and that’s how we ended up at Nyumbani. In fact even Hon Frank himself was a bit hesitant to have Covid-19 suspects quarantined at his hotel, but at that time we left him with no choice,” Kiwanda further says.
“At that time, I had to rely on people I knew by name and who knew me. People like Geoffrey Lutaaya, – the artist, Prof Gilbert Balibasseka Bukenya of Katomi Kingdom Hotel to help us. It was a crisis, we were managing by crisis,” he says.
No influence peddling
We asked UHOA’s Byamugisha, for her and the industry view on the allegations that there was influencing peddling by some big shots in government to have their hotels included on the list of hotels to host suspected cases, but she insists that the process was done fairly especially under the prevailing circumstances.
“In my view, this process was very fair because in the beginning, no one knew anything about Covid-19,” she says adding: “Everybody was scared of the stigma that their hotels would face. Everything we knew then, we had only seen on TV and in the news.”
She also says that allegations of influence peddling are far-fetched, further explaining that she met the minister of health several times regarding quarantine hotels and most of the hotels submitted by UHOA, got guests.
“Ofcourse there was a lot of Kavuyo (confusion)- miscommunication and misinformation here and there, but that was expected because in the beginning it was a crisis. We did work with Hon. Kiwanda; we did work with the national task force. Every hotel that expressed interest was at least followed up to see if it met the standards and many of them hosted quarantined guests. They wanted hotels which had a big number of rooms; hotels with less than 15 rooms didn’t make logistical sense because we were still getting hundreds of passengers from the airport. All I know is that the committee reached out, we used to have very long meetings, late into the night,” she testifies.
(Adapted from www.ceo.co.ug)
