18 May 2020

A 20 year-old Motswana woman of Maunatlala village working in South Africa handed herself to Ramotswa police on Sunday after jumping the border fence.

Ramotswa police Station Commander, Superintendent Keoagile Tau told BOPA in an interview on Monday that the woman had been working at a Saloon at Moshana in South Africa.

He said she confessed to have been scared of the high numbers of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in South Africa, hence she decided to defy the law and return home illegally and was currently quarantined as per the country’s COVID-19 regulations.

The young woman’s case is the tenth case of border jumping since Botswana declared a national lockdown and of all the reported cases, nine are Batswana returning from South Africa while one is a Zimbabwean national.

According to the station commander, the incidents of illegal entry into the country are worrisome as they can defeat ongoing efforts to contain the spread of the Corona-virus.

Supt Tau said every individual had a part to play in protecting the country from the pandemic, noting that people should be alive to the fact that the main transmitter of the disease is humans, therefore as they move across the countries illegally, they could be transporting the virus.

 “The virus does not move, it is people who are transporting the virus,” he said as he made a plea to community members to stay home and observe all precautionary measures of containing the pandemic.

According to the South African national corona-virus online platform, the country as of Monday morning had 15 515 confirmed COVID-19 positive cases, 7006 recoveries and 264 deaths. ends