BY BARNABAS MANEBONA
NATIONAL government while dealing with covid-19 will introduce some control on the ‘frequency’ of foreign nationals leaving and re-entering the country.
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in his fortnightly nationwide address yesterday said “such frequent trips put a lot of pressure on the country’s covid-19 front-liners, all of whom had not had any rest since the start of repatriation in 2020”.
According to Mr Sogavare, the country cannot continue to allow ‘travel at will’ for many foreign nationals for ‘rest and respite’ while covid-19 front-liners have sacrificed theirs to protect this country.
“Fellow citizens, we will also introduce some control on the frequency foreign nationals can leave and re-enter the country while we are still grappling with COVID-19.
“Such frequent trips put a lot of pressure on our front-liners all of whom had not had any rest since the commencement of repatriation in June 2020.
“We cannot continue to allow ‘travel at will’ for many foreign nationals for ‘rest and respite’ while our front-liners have sacrificed theirs to protect this country,” said Sogavare.
The Prime Minister in his address also said that a new ‘travel advisory’ will be issued later this week which will specify new requirements on the frequency of travel for foreign nationals that wish to leave and re-enter the country as well as charges for covid-19 tests.
To date, there is no new additional covid-19 positive case in Solomon Islands.
In the past two weeks the country temporarily went down to one (1) positive case for a few days, however, one of the newly negative cases had reactivated and became positive again, so Solomon Islands official number of covid-19 cases remains at two.
