Around 1:00am last Saturday morning, security agents locked down Fancy Hotel, Umuguma in Owerri West council area of Imo state and put 24 occupants of the hotel made up of guests and workers, in quarantine.
The quarantine was informed by a case who tested positive to the coronavirus in Abuja whose trail and contact-tracing led officials to Fancy Hotel, Umuguma.
For some of the occupants of the hotel who thought it was just a storm that would blow over by daylight, it has been a roller-coaster experience for them living in confinement without basic needs met.
Crimefacts.news had broken the news of the state of the occupants who allegedly have been poorly fed.
But the state of the occupants have since worsened as they presently do not have access to cooking gas, water supply and power supply.
The manager of the Hotel who is also quarantined in the hotel in an exclusive communication told Crimefacts.news that the situation was not getting any better.
The manager (names withheld) said: “The government has actually abandoned us here. I have been doing and trying everything possible to persuade them to treat us like humans but nobody seems to care. They treat us like we are already condemned to die while they have not yet conducted any test on any of us.”
The Manager continued: “This is day five of our being locked down here, and it was only on Sunday that Government brought us food. They brought half bag of raw rice sachet tomato and scanty ingredients without fish or meat for protein.
“It is such that we are subjected to eating only rice for days. Presently we have run out of cooking gas. The generator here has broken down. There is no power supply, there is no water supply as there is no generator to pump the water.
“our water stopped running Tuesday and as I am talking to you, most of us have not had our bath and there is nobody to complain to.
“The Policemen guarding the place do not even allow us to come close enough to communicate. If we try to get near the gate to communicate, they start shouting and threatening you to go back like this is a leprosy centre and we are the inmates.”
The manager noted that their phones were charged by the last diesel which was provided by Imo state Hoteliers Association before their generator packed up.
He regretted that he had also tried to call the emergency hotline of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) but to no avail.
“I have been trying to contact the NCDC through the number they gave the public, to tell them our plight and find out whose responsibility we are, but the number did not connect after several trials.”
Another source who confided in Crimefacts.news averred that health officials from the Imo state government on Wednesday afternoon visited the quarantined occupants of the hotel just to ask some routine health questions.
She said: “They did not conduct any test, did not take any samples for laboratory test and did not bring any food for the quarantined hotel occupants.”
Meanwhile, since Monday morning through Wednesday evening, efforts made to reach the Imo State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Mrs. Damaris Osunkwo have proved abortive. She has so far not taken any of her calls and text messages sent to her mobile phone have not been replied.
The information blackout and the non-responsiveness of the Imo State COVID-19 committee to public enquiries, if sustained, may erode public confidence as the people need to see beyond colourful words, that there are structures and necessary contingencies in place to ward off the spread of the virus in Imo state.
And the Health Commissioner that should give these assurances has remained perpetually incommunicado.
…Crimefacts Exclusive
