Theoretical, the scheme is "not bad". The practical implementation as well as the costs are certainly due for revision.PSD_Kiwi wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 11:27 pm@citizenofdworld ...take yout tin foil hat off. It is a good scheme, and they are not scamming anyone, if they were being corrupt about it you would be reading of more people testing positive, the percentage is extremely low and mostly returning Cambodian Nationals from repatriation flights.
The "test" costs are quite high. For example in Frankfurt, Germany of all highly regulated countries, you can get a proper Covid-19 test at the airport for just EUR 59, result within a few hours, all day. Some airports in EU do this Covid-19 PCR test even for free. Not to say, in Korea and many EU countries ALL people can get tested for free as often as they want. At a large scale.
The food is charged at USD 10 a meal, for a delivery with a value of something like 5000-6000 Riel and as such is really expensive. USD 10 for 200 people, that's USD 2000, 3 times a day, that's USD 6000. Quite a lot of money for 3 meals a day for 200 people, created in bulk, all the same meal, without anything special included.
The "laundry" at USD 15 for a wash, yeah. The day or overnight room for USD 30+ a night.
Don't forget, the government does purchase these supplies at "bulk" quantity pricing in a highly saturated market and subsequently sells at seriously inflated "retail" pricing. There are no "individual" services at the accommodation, no room cleaning, etc.
The "bus" ride to town. 40 people in a city bus for USD 5 each, gives USD 200 for a 30-minute ride. That's more than the same bus does make in a week on its daily Phnom Penh bus routes..... Bus cleaning ?
Hmmmm, just let the bus sit for a couple of hours in a hot sunny environment and the virus reduction potential is significantly better, than with chemicals (which effectively does destroy the interior items of the bus).
On top of that, there is no "complaint" option available.
And the implementation seems to let potentially infected people intermingle freely, giving potential subsequent infections.
Also, the general rule that all passengers need to be quarantined is over the top. If somebody in Economy turns out to be infected, there is no reason to assume the business class passengers would be infected from that, neither the people sitting 2+ rows away from the infected person.
On top of that, the majority of infections do indeed seem to come from return-home Cambodians, for which the government does not require Covid-19 PCR negative status, before travel. Or so to say, the majority of mass quarantines, are the result of governmental decisions, but the non-Cambodian visitors do have to pay. Not really fair, I would say.
So potential improvements:
- Airlines should just insist on Covid-19 PCR negative tests to accept passengers for Long Haul trips, that'll rule out the majority of infected return-home Cambodians. This should be just a general rule, tot get the virus under control.
- No people allowed coming from high-risk locations like the US, UK, Brazil, Iran, India, Pakistan and some more.
- No intermingle of quarantined people, ie "the bus trip".......
- Lower pricing for all those things the government purchases in bulk.
So, yeah, the scheme is according some "Western" Asian cities, at high-end Western Asian cities pricing, but the deliverables are largely just Cambodian style quality.
Is this corruption ? Everything goes with receipts, etc, the "rules" are set, they do not cheat on the results, etc. So, no low-level corruption, no "scamming" by individuals who do the operations.
But the costs are over the top, the rules are over the top as well on the extreme precautionary side, whereas for those things where it can obviously be expected to go wrong, the government simply does no nothing. I can't imagine, nobody at the government does realize this. You may want to call this high-level corruption ......
