NO WIFI & UNSUITABLE FOOD AT JOLLY BEACH ARE MAKING QUARANTINE EXPENSIVE & INTOLERABLE
The Goverment’s quarantine centre at the Jolly Beach Resort is putting all kinds of strain on families, says a returning citizen, who is also complaining about the double standards for arriving passengers.
The woman tells REAL News that the absence of WiFi service at the Bolans location is making it very costly for persons housed there to stay in touch with their families, whom they have not been allowed to see since their return to the island.
In her particular instance, she explains, she needs to stay in touch with her Grade 6 child, who must soon submit SBA’s now that school has reopened. And in order to help him, she is forced to buy data for her phone.
Further, the woman says she has special dietary needs and the food served by the centre is not suitable for her. Accordingly, she says, she has not been able to eat a full meal since being in residence, and relatives have had to bring her drinking water to supplement what the centre provides.
Given that tourists who arrived on the same flight were cleared to go to their hotels, the citizen that she was prepared to pay for a hotel stay, herself, after being informed that she would be quarantined.
However, the medical officer said those arrangements would have had to be made before she arrived, and therefore she would be sent to Jolly Beach.
She asked why she could not be fitted with a monitoring bracelet and allowed to quarantine in her own home. However, the woman says the nurse refused.
Protesting that she had taken the very same PCR test as the visitors, who were being allowed to start their vacation, the woman says the nurse informed her that the situation was different. “They are coming here to spend money,” she reports the nurse saying.
As a tax-payer, the woman says she is feeling a keen sense of discrimination. She is confined to a hotel where, she says, there is nothing to do, except watch two “scrambled” TV channels or sleep – since the beach is off-limits.
She says a family emergency forced her to travel in these times, and she understands the quarantine requirement. However, the Government needs to do better for returning residents, particularly where Internet communication is concerned, she says.
