On again, off again; on again, off again – you couldn’t make it up if you tried.
That’s the idea one gets about the increasingly bizarre case of the Covid-19 medical certificate Zambia’s Ministry of Health (MoH) has supposedly said will be necessary to enter the country.
That ruling, initially said to be from the MoH, on restricting transporters without the certificates and those who have tested positive for Covid-19, was yesterday put on hold amid an outcry from cross-border transporters that the restriction was not practical.
All of a sudden it seemed that the MoH had not actually dug in its heels about the matter, and that sanity, for a change, would prevail on the North-South Corridor (NSC).
But that was yesterday.
This morning it emerged that things had changed yet again.
Speaking from Chirundu Border Post at the Zambezi River crossing between Zambia and Zimbabwe where the notice about the restriction first went up, a runner serving the logistics industry dashed hauliers’ hopes about the restriction.
“I have just come from the health office,” the runner said.
“They are saying there is no reversal on the negative Covid-19 certificate requirement.”
He added that drivers currently at the border would be exempted from the restriction because of the confusion around it.
Sounds like fact being stranger than fiction? It is.
But wait, the plot thickens.
According to Mike Fitzmaurice, chief executive of the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations (Fesarta), the MoH has told Fesarta that it was never their decision but was based on an SADC directive taken on the 27th of July.
According to that directive, all member states of the Southern African Development Community will have to implement the restriction.
“From what we know Botswana has also adopted the decision but we don’t know whether it’s being implemented there or in Zambia. We haven’t received word from any of our members that their drivers are being stopped from entering either Botswana or Zambia.”
Fitzmaurice said he had studied the directive and it correlated with what the MoH had told him.
It begs the question though that if it came from the SADC and all member states are expected to follow suit, why have hauliers in South Africa, for example, not heard from the relevant authorities?
Meanwhile the rank impracticality of the decision remains unaddressed.
“The thing is in countries like South Africa you cannot get tested by the government unless you’re showing symptoms, there simply aren’t enough test kits. And should you turn to private testing through labs such as Ampath, they let you know via SMS. They don’t give you a certificate.
“Meanwhile, no transporter from South Africa knows what’s going on because no one tells us anything. You would think that the Department of Health and the Department of Transport would have been consulted by the SADC prior to the directive being issued on the 27th. Yet they haven’t said anything.”
And while transporters on the NSC head for Zambia without Covid yea or nay certificates, it’s anyone’s guess whether they will be allowed to proceed through borders like Chirundu.
One thing is certain – by this time tomorrow things will probably have changed again.
Whether the coronavirus restriction story could become any more bizarre though, is anyone’s guess.