LONDON: British Indian Puneet Dwivedi spent hundreds of pounds on phone calls to the UK from India to organise his mandatory hotel quarantine, only to find the calls diverted to an Indian call centre.
After landing at Heathrow, he was taken on a three-hour bus journey to a hotel in Swindon, 106km from the airport, where he was given two single beds and a cot for his entire family – and nothing but pizza for dinner.
Apart from having to sleep on the floor despite having shelled out the compulsory fee of over £3,000 (Rs 3 lakh), Dwivedi was shocked to find fungus in the kettle, a blood-stained duvet and the only vegetarian option in the evening to be a dairy-free pizza.
Security guards patrol the corridors outside the room where he, his wife, his one-and-a-half-year-old and nine-year-old daughters have to spend 10 days as part of Covid protocol since India was added to the UK’s red list.
The windows only open slightly, and the family is only allowed out for 15 minutes each day, under the close watch of the security.
“My baby is frustrated as she has just started walking, and she has no space to walk,” said Dwivedi, who tries to work as his family watches movies with headphones on all day.
“We don’t feel ok after paying so much money, and with four of us in one room, it is overcrowded.” What has surprised Dwivedi the most is that the entire UK hotel quarantine system seems to have been outsourced to a call centre in India.
“They can barely understand English, and the phone line is terrible,” the 39-year-old, who was born in Assam and now lives in Edinburgh, said.
Not only did his request for a family room go unanswered, he had to wait until four hours before his flight to receive the invoice.
The document arrived only after he had tagged several people in a tweet – and that was when he found out the hotel was in Swindon.
The family had gone to Lucknow in February as his mother-in-law passed away in January.
In early April, he, his wife and his father-in-law came down with Covid.
They were unable to find a hospital bed; so were forced to buy oxygen concentrators in the black market.
His wife lost her job in Edinburgh as she failed to show up for work.
Nearly nine thousand travellers from red-listed countries have joined a Facebook group to share their own UK quarantine horror stories, and several petitions addressed to MPs have sprung up, all demanding that the system be axed.
“I don’t blame the hotel, it’s the company that UK government has outsourced the whole quarantine thing to that is the problem,” Dwivedi said.
“It is shambolic.” Sunil Amar, a private banker from London, has been waiting for India to be taken off the red list since April.
He travelled to Gurgaon in December to carry out some repairs on his flat and then got stuck.
His daughter is seven months pregnant and he is losing business opportunities as he is unable to meet clients face to face in London.
Now he plans to return next week.
“It’s not going to be easy but what choice have I got,” he said.
“It seems like a money-making machine.” A government spokesperson said, “Our top priority has always been protecting the public and the robust border and testing regime we have in place is helping minimise the risk of new variants coming into the UK.
Hotels do their utmost to take any necessary steps to address concerns raised by guests.”