No hotel for air passengers

The air passengers to Guwahati are not expected to get any hotel facility at the city from Tuesday onwards as almost all the hotels are going to be filled up by the night of Monday as around 30 flights are supposed to land on the first day of the Air operation resumption at Guwahati.

The Guwahati city administration is bracing for very major chaos as it will take a minimum of 24 hours to handle the first-day passengers to evacuate from the airport to various quarantine centres.

"Every passenger will be needed 10 minutes for screening. So imagine the time 2000 passengers will consume. We have ramped up testing facilities but it is going to be a rough one and I want to make an advance apology. Moreover, we have not got the manifest from the airlines and we do not know how many persons are getting down at Guwahati. We are not even sure it is 28 or 32 flights" warned Assam Health Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma.

But the biggest issue will be accommodations as the airpassengers would be expecting comfortable hotel rooms than institutionalized quarantinefacilities. There will be no more hotel rooms even for half of tomorrow'spassengers.

Guwahati as of now has 1000 hotel rooms left after allocating a similar number of rooms to those who had already come by surface transport. Tomorrow in the 30 odd flights about 2000 passengers are expected, which means for half there will be no luck in hotels.

So the majority of the passengers from tomorrow afternoon onwards are to spend seven days of quarantine in various colleges and schools around Guwahati with common toilet facilities and basic facilities.

"So by evening we do expect a lot of complaints on Facebook and twitter but there is no way out. We are for hardcore and heartless quarantine. Otherwise, our entire effort of the past two months would be swept away by this avalanche of air passengers" said Dr Sarma in the press conference.