Tricked into hotels for quarantine, fume Kovai air passengers

Even though the Airports Authority of India (AAI) guidelines stipulate only home quarantine for domestic air passengers entering Tamil Nadu, employees of a few travel agencies were found duping gullible passengers to undergo costly quarantine stay in hotels. Two city-based passengers, who returned after a six-day business trip from Mumbai on August 24, shared the bitter experience of being sent to a hotel for compulsory quarantine.

“While checking out from the airport, a person claiming to be AAI staff asked us to be undergo quarantine in a specific private hotel until the COVID-19 testing results declared us to be negative. It was only when I made queries at the COVID control room for the test results on Wednesday morning, that I came to know that institutional quarantine was not compulsory for domestic passengers. I am not bothered by the money spent on my stay, but such fraud shouldn’t go unchecked,” said Manish Kankaria, one of the passengers.

He added that the travel firm and the private hotel must have been in nexus with the staff of the Health Department in conning such gullible air passengers. Meanwhile, an official of the Health Department asked the public not to fall prey to fraudsters and asked them to be aware of the guidelines. The Coimbatore International Airport director R Mahalingam clarified that AAI has no role in screening and quarantining of passengers at the airport as they are done by the Health Wing of the State government.

The Coimbatore Corporation has requested big commercial firms to go for pool testing of their employees for COVID-19 once in 15 days in the wake of an surge in infections in the district.