COVID-19 Quarantine: High Cost of Hotel for Stranded Ghanaians, Ghana Government is Insensitive

Ghanaian nationals who have been stranded in several countries for the past three months due to COVID-19 travel restrictions have been asked by the Ghanaian authorities to pay huge sums of money as hotel cost for their mandatory 14-day quarantine when been evacuated by the government.

A statement sighted by Info Radio from the Ghana High Commission to the United Kingdom and Germany has been asking Ghanaian evacuees to pay between 500-600 Ghana cedes daily as the cost for their hotel and feeding during their mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Majority of these destitute Ghanaian nationals who have spent all their savings and some resorting to borrowing monies from friends and families to survive during the period of the travel restrictions and border closure have expressed their frustration about their government.

Some of the Ghanaian evacuees from Germany and the UK described the decision by the Ghanaian government to select only expensive hotels as venues for their mandatory quarantine as insensitive and an inadequate assessment of their plight in these difficult times.

The evacuees have therefore called on the Ghanaian authorities to select affordable hotels where they can observe their mandatory quarantine or give them the option of self-isolation in their homes as been done in most countries.

In a country where the minimum wage is less than $3 a day for the average Ghanaian worker, one wonder but to ask why the Ghanaian authorities are expecting its stranded citizens in other countries to pay almost $100 a day as the cost for quarantine before been evacuated to their own country.

Stranded Ghanaian nationals in the UK are expected to be evacuated by the government of Ghana on the 17th and 19th-21st June for Ghanaians in Germany and some EU countries.