Western Cape Minister of Finance and Economic Opportunities, David Maynier says he’s written to the UK Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Elizabeth Truss requesting that South Africa be removed from the UK red list.
Under the UK red list, travellers in those countries will have to undergo a mandatory quarantine at a determined hotel for 10 days at own cost, before being allowed into the UK.
Maynier says the letter to Truss is one of the steps the provincial government is taking to engage key decision makers in the UK as well as South Africa ahead of the summer season. Maynier says the province has lost over 75-thousand jobs in the tourism sector in the last year alone.
Earlier, Western Cape Premier, Alan Winde, called for the province to be moved to Alert Level 1 immediately with the termination of the National State of Disaster as soon as possible.
COVID-19 cases have decreased significantly in the province.
Last week, there was a total of 434 new cases daily based on the 7-day moving average.
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Winde says this shows that the province has exited the third wave. He encouraged residents to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
He says vaccination rates need to be as high as possible so that visitors return to the county during the peak summer season and help grow the economy.
“This specific sector is a key sector for us in the Western Cape – a key jobs driver, key economic driver, and it has been under severe pressure for the last 18 months because of COVID-19. Let us use this time as we are moving towards summer to celebrate our own country, our own experiences, our own offerings that we normally offer the world.”
![[File Image] Electricity pylons are seen in front of the cooling towers at the Lethabo Thermal Power Station, an Eskom coal-burning power station near Sasolburg in the northern Free State province.](https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Eskom-R.png)
