India-bound patients stranded

Over 50 patients are stranded in Dar es Salaam following elusive travel arrangements to India where they have been referred for heart-related ailments due to yet unspecified delays between the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and a travel agent on behalf of Qatar Airways.
Scores of patients told the 'Daily News' yesterday at the ministry premises that they had been following up the matter for months without success. Most said they were waiting for an ‘official’ supervising their travel arrangements, and had been been waiting to travel since April, this year.
But for some unknown reasons, any hope of travel to India has eluded them – although they have all the required documents including visas and air tickets, for which they have had to pay afresh every time there’s some postponement.
A woman from Dodoma said she came to Dar es Salaam in March, and obtained a visa to India on April 29, 2008 for 50,000/-. Since then, she says she has gone in circles for so long that her first visa expired six months later and had to cough up another 97,000/- for a new visa when the official at the ministry called her saying that the trip was due.
“After paying for the other visa fees I was sure it was the end of it and was told I would be leaving on the 12th of last month but that wasn’t to be … even after having a ticket in my hand and checking in at the airport,” she explained. She said that she was told by the airline that she and other patients who were travelling with her were supposed to go back to their doctors with forms that would clarify that they are healthy enough to travel without support.
Another patient from Kagera has been following up on the travel arrangements for his one and a half year old son for the past four months to no avail.
03/12/08 Masembe Tambwe/DailyNewsOnline, United Republic of Tanzania

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Categories: Foreign Dec 2008