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To Lockdown or impose curfew—that is the question
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The Covid-19 Pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges to the world and almost brought day-to-day life to a standstill in nearly 200 countries. Different countries have adopted diverse strategies to curtail the spread of the virus with different degrees of success.
The variation in the rates of success of these strategies is not always to do with the correctness or otherwise of the plans carried out. It also has to do with the context particular to different countries. Sometimes it has to do with individual indiscretions or lack of knowledge in the initial days of the pandemic as was the case of the superspreader in South Korea.
Sri Lanka has managed to contain the spread of the virus through a variety of measures. The Government has successfully marshaled a range of available resources including the Healthcare professionals, the Security Forces and the Police as well as a number of administrative personnel and put in place a system of quarantining those infected or potentially capable of being infected in order to curtail the spread of the deadly virus.
With the number of persons who have contracted the virus remaining around the 100 mark, and no new cases being reported in the country in the 24 hours ending on Saturday morning at 8.00 am, there is a risk of complacency setting in and the country dropping its guard against the spread of the virus.
Sri Lanka is fortunate in having a set of highly skilled healthcare professionals who have been in the frontline battling the virus. The Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) has with its regular situation reports kept the Government and the country on its toes while other organisations like the Sri Lanka Medical Association as well as Government healthcare administrators have played a critical role in shaping the strategy that the Government has followed so far.
The area that seems to pose the biggest challenge to the Government is how to ensure food and other essential services to the people in the days to come. It is no surprise weaknesses in the food supply chain that exist even in normal times get aggravated at times of crisis, like the present. However the Government resorting to curfews with the lifting of such curfews in fits and starts have compounded the issue to no end.
The experience of the past two weeks has showed up the glitches in the method of using the curfew to keep the public at home. With the Government giving the public only a window of six to eight hours to purchase their essentials, with no intimation when the curfew will be lifted again, it is not surprising there was a rush to get to food and medicine outlets and panic buying.
For instance it has been announced that the curfew will remain indefinitely in Colombo, Gampaha and Kalutara Districts. It will therefore not be surprising if there is a mad rush to the outlets on the day the curfew is lifted. While those living in the less crowded areas of Colombo may follow practices like social distancing while waiting their turn in queues outside supermarkets the poor and marginalised who have the added burden of being daily wage earners understandably may not have the patience to exercise such self restraint. And the large crowds that throng these places will inevitably defeat the very objectives of social distancing that the Government and Health authorities seek to achieve.
While there are a large number of initiatives on the part of social minded and charitable groups to collect and distribute free packs of essentials among the poor, it is unlikely that these groups of good Samaritans will be able to sustain these efforts over a period of time.
The Government should seriously consider replacing the island wide curfew with the system of lockdowns that have been followed by other countries. This will ensure that retail grocery outlets including supermarkets, pharmacies, banks and other essential services will be kept open during prescribed times together with restricted movement of people to obtain their necessities.
Such a system of lockdowns will in no way disrupt the mechanisms put in place by the Government to curb the spread of the Covid-19 virus. In fact it may help to achieve such objectives more efficaciously than through curfews.
There are also other measures that the Government for its part needs to take. Parliament should be re-summoned as has been the practice whenever a national crisis has occurred in the past. Participation of the people’s representatives in discussing the situation faced by the country can help to unite the whole nation in the face of the national crisis.
The political formations that constitute the Opposition need to be brought in to share the burden in this time of national need. An international example is the Netherlands where the Government called in the Opposition to give a helping hand by inviting an Opposition Member, the former Health Minister, to join the Government and participate in the national effort against the pandemic.
In this context the summoning of the All Party meeting to discuss matters related to the Covid-19 by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse was welcome although it would have been better done earlier. The appointment of a multi-party Task Force to advise the Government would have greatly helped to create a sense of urgency in the country.
Parliament is the main institution that ensures accountability of governance. It gives members of Parliament a platform to make suggestions and bring to the notice of the Government any gaps in crisis governance as well as question the Government and its ministers. A pooling of such ideas can only help and enrich the national efforts to handle the virus.
It will also correct an undesirable situation that has developed in the country. At present of the three organs of Government, only the executive is functioning without the checks and balances laid down in the Constitution as provided by the legislature and the judiciary. According to some observers the parliamentary elections could be delayed even up to November which can result in the unhealthy situation of the country being governed only by one arm of the Government for a considerable period of time.
This can result in various aberrations in governance taking place without any form of accountability which can be mitigated if Parliament functions. The shocking case of the Presidential pardon of the individual convicted in the case of the Mirusuvil massacre immediately comes to mind. The substantial issue of the pardon as well as the timing of such pardon when the country is engaged in a national struggle to combat the Covid-19 virus will escape the necessary scrutiny that such a decision demands with Parliament remaining dissolved.
The other factor that militates against the process of accountability is that the media is functioning at a minimal level due to the current situation. It is ironic but true that it is at the very time that the media should be functioning in a robust manner it is unable to do so due to the restrictions that are in place as part of the steps being taken to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continuously sharing knowledge with the public will ensure that there is buy in from the people for the measures taken by the Government and would go a long way in the public’s willingness to undergo any difficulties they may face as a result of the current situation.
(javidyusuf@gmail.com)