Morocco’s Airport Screening for Coronavirus Under Scrutiny as Travelers Report Lax Controls

Moroccans coming from abroad complain about the lightness with which the control is carried out at the various airports of the kingdom. The situation is all the more difficult to understand when one knows that the threat is still real, and that the virus, more than ever, is approaching the Moroccan borders. Hespress, cited by article19.ma, gives the case of a Moroccan coming from Italy, who claims that the authorities at Mohammed V Airport in Casablanca "only distributed a form to be filled out" by travelers from various countries to specify the countries of their origin and transit, "without any medical examination being carried out".

What is even more serious, this same traveler, coming from a country where several cases have been reported, and several cities have been quarantined, claims "not to have encountered any medical team on site upon his arrival around 11:30 pm at Casablanca airport". What has become of the draconian measures spoken of by the Ministry of Health, which should make it possible to detect any case of contamination among those who set foot on Moroccan soil, coming from countries affected by the epidemic?

On this subject, Bouazza Kherrati, the president of the Moroccan Federation of Consumer Rights, claims to have received many complaints from Moroccan citizens, some of whom are coming from Italy, who are surprised by the absence of the necessary medical control procedures to deal with the spread of the Coronavirus. For them, the forms filled out by the passengers are not enough. Kherrati considers it necessary to mobilize medical staff at the airports and to deal with the problem with great firmness at the level of maritime and land borders, especially at the border posts of Ceuta, Melilla and Guergarat.

Faced with the concern raised by several citizens, the leader of the PAM, Abdellatif Ouahbi, joined the heads of the Istiqlal and the PPS to urgently summon the Minister of Health, Khalis Aït Taleb, to Parliament. He must pronounce on "the health prevention system put in place in Morocco against a possible spread of the Coronavirus".