Why close border for COVID-19?

A van transporting emaSwati and South Africans as they cross the border at Matsamo.

of them were coming from making groceries in SA. Be careful because bail is very expensive in SA,” the woman in the voice note warns.

She further explains that December 20, upwards was strategically made the starting date for the intense monitoring because pupils schooling in SA would have already returned to

Eswatini, leaving only those who were employed in the neighbouring State.

“People, if you are not careful you will have to spend Christmas in jail,” she said.

When scores of emaSwati were returning home for Easter this year, the country was in the midst of the second wave, resulting in long queues at Mshololo informal crossing point, in the Shiselweni Region.

SA had been recording as much as 20 000 positive cases of COVID-19 in one day this week, following an announcement that the neighbouring State has the Omicron variant.

Meanwhile, Eswatini has also been recording high numbers of over E1 000 per day.

M– Business travellers have questioned the logic behind the impromptu closure of border gates for fumigation purposes whenever a COVID-19 case was discovered.

The concern from regular travellers is that closing the border for four hours results in inconveniences in their business schedules.

“Before one travels, they make prior arrangements for the time to be spent on the road and at the border. If then one finds the border closed for fumigation purposes, that is a great inconvenience,” said a regular traveller.

The argument advanced was that other workplaces had learnt to respond to COVID-19 cases without inconveniencing customers, as was the case during the elementary stages of the COVID-19 discovery in the country.

Strange

“It was fine to shut down companies for fumigation purposes, then, because the disease was very strange. But the constant education and sensitisation work by governments have made people aware of what they can do in an environment where a person tested positive. With over 1 000 cases being reported daily, and most of these being the working class, what will happen if the companies would close everyday for fumigation purposes,” wondered the traveller.

Communications Officer in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Mlandvo Dlamini, said though it was true that people were inconvenienced during the temporary closures, the decision was not only of the Eswatini side of the border.

Operations

“The border has both the Eswatini and the neighbouring State’s passport control sides. If on the other side they shut down because of a COVID-19 case, it goes without saying that we also need to halt operations for that period,” he said.

Asked why they did not engage on the issues with their counterparts in the neighbouring State, he said there were many other considerations to be made, such as labour rights.

“The labour laws gives workers the right to refuse to work in an environment that they think it exposes them to unhealthy conditions,” he said.