ENTRY PAINS - Duplicate questions, long processing times frustrate travellers at airport
Published:Sunday | December 13, 2020 | 12:13 AMCorey Robinson - Senior Staff Reporter
Three-year-old Kenny shrieked with excitement as the airplane dipped closer towards the Sangster International Airport, bringing the “green water” and curvy Montego Bay shoreline closer to view.
The boy had been singing about making sandcastles on the beach long before the plane left Orlando and now – an hour and a half later – his exhausted mother, Karen, was equally eager for the silence.
Unbeknown to her, however, it would take almost as long as her flight to pass through the tiered COVID-19 screening measures at the airport as young Kenny – in all his excitement – was not approved for entry into the island. To make matters worse, they were not the only vacationing family in this predicament two Sundays ago.
“That part of it really ticked me off. On their system online, I added my son about five times and for some reason it didn’t go through. So I had to come here and do another application for a minor, which does not make sense to me,” argued the mother, a Jamaican living in the United States.
“They deliberately asked me on the online application who I’m travelling with. I stated that I was travelling with one more person and I added all my baby’s information. Now, when I get to Montego Bay, I had to apply online for my baby all over again? That really threw me off,” she lamented.
“I’m also not seeing where they are practising any social distancing. We were all bundled up in the line trying to get out. Even at the health desk, we were so jumbled. The persons next to me were so close, the chairs were so close. So in this regard, I don’t think they’re doing a good job,” remarked the nurse.
Karen has been tending to COVID-19 patients in Florida for the better part of the year and has undergone weekly COVID-19 tests for work. She had been asked to take a test prior to travel, which she said she did; and marvelled that she was not asked the results or for confirmation of the hotel she reported she would be staying.
“There is too much procedure; and it is the same thing,” argued Susan Gordon, a Jamaican resident. “The first stop, they take your temperature, which is fine. Then there is a next set of ladies who look at your approval. They can be eliminated completely! Then the soldiers take your name and address – same info.
“I just think that you don’t need four stops,” continued Gordon, who arrived in the island a week earlier. “You try to avoid the crowd leaving the plane and then you are in the airport facing the same thing.”
Fine-tuning processes
COVID-19 has reshaped travelling to Jamaica and last week, Jamaican authorities say they continue to fine-tune the processes to make life less hellish for travellers this Christmas season.
“I have heard of it and have seen some of that (lack of social distancing) when I toured the facilities, but you would appreciate that distancing is but one of the measures to prevent the spread of the virus. The other measures, including sanitising and mask-wearing, are equally if not more important,” explained Audley Deidrick, president and CEO of the Airports Authority.
“What we have done in response to the long waiting time is to place a lot more of the matters that were previously done manually in the JamCOVID application and travel authorisation process. It was previously a requirement for the quarantine order to be read to the passengers, and just a week or so, we removed that completely.”
“It is now done as part of the application, acknowledged and verified electronically, and so the number of nurses that were in the airports – and the waiting time – has significantly improved,” he continued. “There was also a cadre of civilian staff to deal with the downloading of the application, but because of certain bad experience, we resorted to using the Jamaica Defence Force.
“One of the delays and shortcomings is, in fact, the duplication of questions being asked physically when they were already asked in the application process,” Deidrick admitted. “This is one more area where there is greater acceptance to the questions being submitted electronically.”
On Thursday, Dushyant Savadia, founder and CEO of the Amber group which created the JamCOVID-19 application, said the platform has evolved over months into state-of-the-art traveller monitoring technology. Savadia empathised with travellers, but warned them to start the process early.
“The application has been solving many challenges by digitalising the complete end-to-end visibility for the Ministry of Health, contact tracing and ensuring that those passengers who are in the country now are in good health. If you look at it, as a country, we have become the leaders in managing and monitoring travellers in the pandemic,” he said.
“If you are a resident, your travel application is valid for 14 days. Don’t wait until the last minute and create pressure on the system. Please make sure that you give enough time to review applications for approval. If you are a visitor, download the JamCOVID application in advance,” Savadia suggested.
“What happens is they arrive at the airport and then they download the app and then have all sorts of delays. You can avoid all that. If you download the application before travel, it expedites the process.”