DA wants Home Affairs Minister to clarify revised tourism red list which is destroying tourism industry
20 October 2020
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will write to the Minister of Home Affairs, Aaron Motsoaledi, to request clarity on the criteria used to draw up the red list comprising of countries South Africa considers as high risk for international travel due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We will also submit parliamentary questions in this regard.
The Department of Home Affairs on Monday published a revised red list. The DA is of the view that the system to identify these high risk nations is not only illogical but has also shown to be having a devastating effect on the tourism industry, jobs and the economy.
The list, which was 5 days overdue, now stands at 22, down from an initial 60 nations. While the number of countries are reduced, the list now includes countries such as Germany, the United States and Canada which are among the most important source markets for tourism in South Africa.
As was the case last time, the revised red list appears to have been arbitrarily drawn up as there is no correlation with the latest global Covid statistics. If total deaths per country was the criteria used to draw up this list then countries like Ecuador would have been included on the list as it has more deaths than Canada which was added onto the red list. Turkey and Bolivia with more deaths and are not on the red list yet the Netherlands with less deaths than those two countries remain on the list.