Stronger measures needed at borders, says De Peiza

Barbados is catching at tourists’ dollars, but ending up having to spend these funds on health.

Chastising the Mia Mottley-led administration for the current situation which has seen this island hitting record levels of COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, President of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), Verla De Peiza, insisted the current curfew was not having much of an impact on curbing the spread and called for amongst other things, stronger containment measures at this island’s ports of entry.

“It is not enough for the Minister (of Tourism) to say we have strong measures at our borders and that we are catching them at the borders. The fact of the matter is, is that COVID got into the community because it was brought to Barbados. So therefore, we need to have that containment at the borders to be at its strongest, and once again, we need to be following the science where those quarantine protocols are concerned with travelling because at the end of the day, we catch at the tourist dollar and spend it on health and that cannot have a positive effect on our economy.

“And it is not enough for the minister to be constantly talking about an uptick in bookings when we are also hearing hotels speak about an uptick in cancellations, because the situation in Barbados has reached the stage where we have reached dubious records internationally,” she stated during a press conference yesterday morning.

However, De Peiza’s stance was in stark contrast to an announcement made by Health Minister, Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic, just an hour following the DLP’s event, where he said that come Sunday, fully vaccinated travellers to Barbados with a valid negative pre-flight COVID-19 PCR test result can leave the ports of entry with no restrictions as they no longer will be required to either take a test or quarantine on arrival on this country’s shores.

The statement comes at a time when hoteliers have reported a significant fall-off in winter bookings as a result of the spike of COVID-19 cases in the island due to the wide community spread of the Delta variant.