Flyers to be sent home in minibuses

Those To Be Quarantined At Home Will Be Stamped

Sivakumar.B@timesgroup.com

Chennai:22.03.2020

Passengers landing at Chennai airport henceforth will not be allowed to hire a taxi or board metro rail trains. Instead, they will have to board minibuses stationed at the airport to reach their destinations. Those who need to be home-quarantined will be stamped as is being done at other airports.

This is part of the state government’s measures to prevent spread of Covid-19 and track and monitor air passengers arriving from other cities in the country.

Health minister C Vijayabaskar said in the assembly that passengers having personal vehicles can use them to leave the airport. “When a passenger uses a taxi, we are unable to track where all he has gone and who all he or she has met. To make tracking of passengers possible, hereafter, they will have to use the mini buses stationed at the airport to go to their destinations,” he said.

“We have started stamping at Madurai airport and the same will be done at all other airports in the state," he added while detailing the preventive measures to be taken to fight the spread of Covid-19.

Chennai airport records around 16,000 passengers per day at the domestic terminal. There will be no international flights at the airport from Sunday.

Around five minibuses will be arranged to ferry passengers to hotels or their residences. Passenger arrivals have dropped considerably in the last few days. Usually, around 10% of the domestic arrival travel by cabs, the rest go by private cars and metro rail trains, said an official.

However, airport officials said implementing this will be chaotic because no one would want to travel by mini buses to their houses.

The minister said screening of passengers at railway stations was tough as the crowd is huge. “We have seven testing centres at Chennai Central. Similar facilities are available at Egmore and Tambaram stations also. But it is difficult to screen and track each and every passenger,” said Vijayabaskar.

He was replying to the leader of opposition, M K Stalin, who wanted to know the steps taken by the government to prevent spread of the virus.

CHECKING THE SPREAD: Around five minibuses will be arranged to ferry passengers to hotels or their residences. Passenger arrivals have dropped considerably over the past few days