The Hospitality Association of Namibia (HAN), the Tour and Safari Association of Namibia and some key tourism service providers have asked the government to review the current Public Health Regulations regarding the SARS-CoV-2 PCR test results.
The regulations, which came into force last week and are effective until 15 September 2021, states that anyone entering Namibia should present an authorised PCR test result from the country of departure not older than 72 hours and is calculated from the date the sample for testing was taken.
New Era reports that tourism players have requested the public health regulations to be amended to the original wording of not older than 72 hours up to the time of the first embarkation.
They said this will make it geographically possible for visitors from high-value source markets across time zones, including Far East Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore and China) and North America to reach Namibia.
"A change in the wording of one regulation is stifling long-haul travel, thus creating enormous losses in the tourism industry to the nation's economy and cost thousands of Namibians their jobs," HAN chief executive Gitta Paetzold was quoted as saying by New Era.
The tourism sector said that if the current wording were to remain in place, it would result in 60% cancellation of bookings, held by long-haul travellers.
“This can be extrapolated to 30 or 40 businesses across Namibia in both rural and urban areas. Over a year, this would result in the loss of N$20 million bookings," said the industry players.
“Crude extrapolation across 40 businesses is up to N$800m direct loss, and 3 000 citizens stand to lose their jobs.”
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