Fiji Labour Party Leader, Mahendra Chaudhry says all wisdom dictates that the only way to stop the phenomenal spread of the COVID-19 virus is to put the whole island in a hard lockdown for three weeks or whatever is necessary to stamp it out.
He says it may not be a pleasant thing to do but that is what the hard reality warrants.
The FLP Leader also says we must take a lesson from Australia and New Zealand who have imposed lockdowns with only a few cases because they do not want to endanger the lives of their people.
He maintains that with COVID cases mounting alarmingly, people throughout the country are wondering why government is not imposing a hard lockdown.
Chaudhry says there is a lot of fear out there about the spread of the virus and the government must put the health of the people before all other priorities. The FLP Leader says the infection rate has gone viral and deaths are rising.
Chaudhry says health authorities warn the situation will get much worse.
He says what the FLP also find puzzling is the changed stance from Health Permanent Secretary.
Chaudhry says the Permanent Secretary has changed his comments from, “You move, the virus moves with you” to his latest comment that he is “not particularly confident that a lockdown will keep our COVID-19 numbers down”. Chaudhry also says it is clear that the rate of infection began spiralling in the Central Division ever since border controls were relaxed three weeks ago.
He says against this alarming backdrop of spiraling cases of infection, it is absolutely preposterous for the Commerce Minister, Faiyaz Koya to announce that retail shops will now be allowed to operate in Viti Levu “using safe protocols”.
Chaudhry says most people are flabbergasted that government is allowing the economy to open up at a time when the crisis is at its worst.
He says our health facilities have been stretched to the uttermost if it isn’t already near collapse.
Chaudhry says infected people are being forced to isolate at home, make shift hospitals are being set up and front line health workers and security personnel are getting increasingly infected.
He says if we are not able to cope now, what will happen in the next couple of weeks as the infection rate rises to phenomenal levels, as we have been warned it will.
Chaudhry says economic revival will not be possible in an environment fraught with risks to people’s health and lives.
He says a change of approach is definitely needed to contain what might soon become a calamity of unimaginable proportions.
Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama had earlier said that at that stage, it should be clear that Fiji is not going to get through this pandemic by shutting every Fijian in their homes and shuttering the windows of every business in the country.
Bainimarama said 28 days of a 24 hour curfew for all of Viti Levu would put all of us face to face with economic disaster and miserable isolation.
He said if they took that route, after they spent nearly 700 hours shut in their homes, Fiji would look vastly and cruelly different when we all re-emerge.
Bainimarama added that people’s jobs may never return and Fiji will suffer structural unemployment through the permanent loss of industries and he cannot allow that to happen.
He said at the time that our current outbreak is localized, it is not all over Fiji, it is on Viti Levu and centred in the Central Division.
Bainimarama said in June that the cases are also mostly occurring in known clusters, most of which are within lockdown areas adding they have managed to keep the cases at much lower levels than they could have been, and we certainly have not had the kind of rampant spread that many countries experienced a year or more ago.
He also said the growing numbers of cases are not good news, by any means, but when we look into those numbers, we can understand that as long as we can find and contain the new cases, we can contain or slow the spread by quarantining people we suspect may be positive and isolating those who have tested positive already.
The Prime Minister says it is easy to call for drastic measures like 28 days of straight lockdown for the whole of Viti Levu if you are still in a high-paying job or have a healthy savings account, it is easy to call for a lockdown if you do not depend on day-to-day wages or struggle to pay bills for a business that is closed, it is easy to call for a lockdown if you don’t work at a factory that might permanently leave Fiji if they must shut down completely for 28 days; the garment factories and call centres, that cannot serve overseas clients will lose those contracts –– and the jobs they support – forever.
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