Covid 19 coronavirus: woman unable to book a managed isolation voucher stuck in France

A Kiwi woman with flights booked for later this month says she feels abandoned by the country she calls home because she cannot reserve a voucher for controlled isolation.

Already in debt and borrowing to survive, Holly Dale Tasker faces a winter jobless in France if she can’t get a voucher, forcing her to stay.

The 33-year-old man booked a flight from Paris in September for November 28, long before the government introduced the Managed Isolation Assignment System (MIAS) in early October.

However, ever since the government introduced the system, Tasker has been glued to her computer trying to get a free spot.

“I’ve been checking it every day since about October 2,” Tasker says. “For the last few days I have been updating the page every three minutes.”

She set an alarm to go to the website when it was first launched, however the site crashed shortly after it went online.

Tasker’s sister tries her luck during the day in New Zealand when Tasker is asleep.

A place will appear from time to time periodically, but it disappears instantly or whenever you click on it, the site doesn’t load, Tasker says.

The makeup artist has been in France since 2018, but lost her job in March when the European country entered its first lockdown.

Tasker had been teaching English as a backup, but the country has entered a second lockdown, meaning all the work has dried up.

She says her flights cost € 3000 ($ 5135) and she is already in debt and facing a penniless winter.

“I can’t afford to rebook a flight for next year,” Tasker says. “I feel less like a Kiwi, I feel like the door has closed in my face.

“Never in my life did I think I would be punished for leaving [New Zealand].

“When you are abroad, in the back of your head you can always go home. I grew up there, my whole family lives there; New Zealand is my home and I want to go back.”

Tasker can’t understand how someone with flights booked in advance before the coupon system went live doesn’t take precedence over someone else.

She can understand why people like Russian sailors and other foreign workers are brought into the country, but says she is happy to do anything after losing her job.

The government had handled the Covid-19 situation well and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had been amazing, but they really dropped the ball this time, Tasker says.

“I was bragging about how well New Zealand had handled it, everyone was jealous that I was going back to a place where I didn’t need to wear a mask.

“Now I wonder, what happened? How is it so badly organized? I just don’t understand. I keep reading about all these stagnant New Zealand citizens like me.

“I drank [working abroad] of course how well everything was going and then Covid-19 hit and it’s just chaos. I do not really know what to do “.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said the government would not reimburse flights where people lost coupons for their travel dates.

Due to Covid-19, flight data could be very changeable and most airfares were flexible, he said.

The airlines informed them of the confirmed flight times, which they then uploaded into the managed isolation allocation system.

“This will affect people who book when they cannot find their flight details in the managed isolation allocation system, because the flight has not been recorded or the time has been changed.

“We have been encouraging people to contact their airline to confirm their flights in these situations. We reported this on the MIAS website in October.”

There are 32 Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) facilities across the country, accommodating 6261 people at a time.

From October 5 to November 10, 38,483 passengers had used the voucher system.

Initially, the coupons could only be booked two months in advance, but MBIE has been adding slots later as it confirmed airline schedules.

Spaces are currently available between December 22 and February 28, and may be available more on other dates if people change their travel plans and cancel their voucher.

There was no queue if people missed their preferred date and needed to continually check for available spaces, the spokeswoman said.