Local leisure travel restrictions slowly ease
If you live in Gauteng, the Western Cape and KZN coast, the ’Berg, Kruger Park and even Sun City are still off limits.
Anyone longing for a change from their home environment may be delighted they can now book to stay over – but for those in Gauteng, this does not include going to the Kruger National Park, the Drakensberg, Cape Town, the KwaZulu-Natal Coast, or even Sun City.
Tourism Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane announced this week that Cabinet agreed to ease some restrictions around leisure travel.
While residents of Gauteng can now book an overnight stay at an approved hotel or lodge, it has to be within the confines of the province one lives in.
“Let me emphasise, it is only intra-provincial travel, not inter-provincial travel. Individuals are still not permitted to travel between provinces for leisure purposes,” Kubayi-Ngubane said announcing the changes to lockdown level 3 restrictions this week.
Government has admitted that the reopening of borders for international travel is a priority but with no indication of when the country will move out of level 3 of lockdown or when provincial or national borders will reopen, it could still be months off.
In her budget speech, the minister said that the UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) listed South Africa as one of the top 15 countries that were being the most negatively impacted by the near-closure of the international travel industry during the coronavirus pandemic.
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