NEW DELHI: Even on Day 5 of Indira Gandhi International Airport having made Covid-19 testing mandatory for flyers from 11 countries exposed to the Omicron coronavirus variant, the arrangements there left the passengers arriving from these countries in dismay.
TOI spoke to people arriving from at-risk countries on Friday. Shaswati Das was one of them. She said, “I pre-booked the Rapid RT-PCR test on Air Suvidha portal and paid Rs 3,500 in advance. My flight was already delayed by two hours due to operational issues and landed in Delhi at 2.45am. I was shocked to be asked to stand in the same queue as the one where other passengers were being tested with no benefit of my pre-booking. And there were only three staffers to process the passengers of a flight that had already arrived and ours. They were obviously overworked and ended up making errors on the test documents. It took me an hour to get the receipt and another two hours to get my test report. During the total of four troublesome hours, I found no refreshments or water available nearby.”
The airport offers passengers two tests: Rapid RT-PCR and RT-PCR at, respectively, Rs 3,500 and Rs 500. The report for the former is supposed to be much quicker than the six hours for the latter. Aman Narang, also flying in from London, too opted for the Rapid RT-PCR test and had a better experience than Das, completing the mandatory procedures within two hours.
Avtar Singh wasn't so lucky. He arrived from Georgia at 6am and was to have caught a flight to Amritsar. “Due to the long wait to get tested, I missed the connecting flight,” said Singh. “I wasn’t aware of the Air Suvidha app and was expecting assistance from the airport staff. But everything was chaotic. Nobody was cooperating with us in getting our test report or immigration clearance done quickly. We had to constantly pester them for everything. I underwent a lot of hassles at the airport today and hope they put in place more passenger-friendly facilities soon.”
Shakti and Saroj, both senior citizens coming to Delhi from Muscat via London, too struggled. The couple said that there was nobody to guide them at the airport and they were left completely on their own to figure out the Covid test procedures. “To add to the tiring journey of 28 hours, two elderly people like us did not even find water or chairs for those waiting for the tests,” complained Saroj. “What is the point of paying Rs 3,500 each when you are made to wait for as long as four hours?”
The various passengers that TOI talked to on Friday believed most of these problems could easily be resolved if the staff deployment for the at-risk arrivals was boosted.
An airport official said, “More than a thousand passengers are being tested every day. We have made adequate arrangements for this. There are a few challenges, but things are smooth. We have made provisions for food and seating, following government guidelines that passengers should be made to feel comfortable. The costs of the tests are also decided by the government.”
Chetan Kohli, COO of Genestrings Diagnostics Centre, which operates the testing facility at IGIA, was unavailable for a comment on the passengers’ complaints about the tests.
