Hyderabad: In the past fortnight over half a dozen NRIs from Jeddah have checked into hotels that have been temporarily turned into paid quarantine centres. An increasing number of NRIs checking into hotels has led to the scarcity of quarantine centres in the city. Hoteliers are demanding huge amounts from foreign returnees.
Mir Gazanfar Ali Razvi, General Secretary of Indian Youth Welfare Association, alleges that a majority of the NRIs are coming back under the Vande Bharat Scheme to Hyderabad are being harassed at the RGIA in the name of providing quarantine and other facilities.
Several activists have expressed concern over Hyderabad hotels being turned into quarantine facilities for NRIs returning to the state.
On Monday, Mir Gazanfar Ali Razvi posted a video on social media demanding action against the hotel mafia looting the NRIs who have already lost their jobs. He said in the video, “As NRIs are coming to the state, it is not prudent enough to keep hotels in the city as paid quarantine centres. Several “Hotel mafia” folks at the airports are harassing the NRIs by first convincing them on the pretext that they will provide good facilities for them but after reaching the hotel they are demanding 15,000 to 20,000 per day. The NRIs have already lost their jobs and are returning to the home with whatever they have left. Yet these hotel mafias are looting them.”
Mir Gazanfar urged the Telangana government to take necessary action against this racket and provide free quarantine facilities to the NRIs just like the Kerala state, he suggested.
He further demanded that these hotels should be closed immediately. The state government should set up quarantine facilities for free of cost.
“It is funny that they send us back to our native districts and we have to be quarantined when we are a stone’s throw away from houses. The government allows asymptomatic patients to be home-isolated but we are quarantined in centers. We should be allowed to go home as we have no money left to pay huge amounts to hotels for quarantine purposes,” said one of the returnees from Jeddah.”
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