JOIN USBengaluru: Foreign returnees to pay a bomb for hotel quarantine
Around 11,000 passengers arriving in Karnataka over the next week will have to shell out a minimum of Rs 16,800 for a two-week stay, or Rs 1,200 per day, at any of the budget hotels in Bengaluru.
The other option is government quarantine centres: hostels run by social welfare, backward classes welfare and minority welfare departments but they are far from satisfactory. This is in stark contrast to the plush government quarantine facilities in Kerala.
Lakshman Reddy, Joint Director, Social Welfare Department, said: “As many as 350 international passengers are set to arrive in Bengaluru at 3 am on Monday. So far, nobody has opted for government quarantine facilities.”
In Bengaluru, there are 55 hostels of the social welfare department, 51 of the backward classes welfare department and 12 of the minority welfare department. “We provide them with three square meals a day,” he added.
Reddy was made the nodal officer for quarantine facilities in the Bengaluru Urban district at a meeting held by the Deputy Commissioner, G N Shivamurthy, on Saturday. “So far, only migrants from five high-risk states — Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Kerala — were kept in our hostels. Yesterday, a group of 23 travellers from Rajasthan saw the hostel but opted to stay at an Oyo hotel,” he said.
While passengers also have the option of choosing three- and five-star hotels selected by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), that’s going to be even costlier with each day costing Rs 1,850 and Rs 4,100 per day, respectively. These rates are inclusive of meals and taxes. In all, there are 150 social welfare hostels in the state that passengers can choose to stay in.
A senior BBMP official said: “If a passenger is unable to pay for even the budget hotels, we will allow them to stay in our hostels. But it is unlikely that those who can afford international travel cannot afford even budget hotels. So far, the government would pay Rs 900 to house primary contacts in the hotels.”
But with the Union government’s guidelines that repatriated passengers must stay in hotels at their own cost, the daily charges have been
increased to Rs 1,200 as the earlier rate was not viable for the hotels, the official
explained.