The General
Secretary of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Atik Mohammed, has lauded
the government’s bold steps to safeguard the lives of the citizenry during the
COVID-19 scourge.
He noted that it takes a great leader to take
tough decisions in the interest of the nation, but might not necessarily
resonate with some members of the public and stressed that “the President
has shown outstanding leadership qualities ensuring the protection of the lives
of the citizenry is his top priority even though the novel COVID-19 will have
an adverse impact on economic growth and development.
”We
need to commend the President for the bold steps he took with some very tough,
especially the imposition of restrictions including the lockdown, if you know
the impact of pandemics or emergency such as we’re facing on the economy and
you’re not bold, you are tempted to say, I won’t take decisions that will have
counterproductive effects on my economy.
“But if
you compare the lives you’re likely to lose to the slump in your economy growth
and development and you have compassion
for people, you will decide that, let’s take the hard decision, our economy
will be affected alright but at least, we will end up saving lives, for me, the
President recognising we should protect human lives even at the expense of our
economy is laudable”, Mr Mohammed indicated.
He however, registered his disagreement with the
President’s lockdown lift because the restrictions on movement, in his candid
view, were necessary in curtailing the spread of the disease and should have
extended the restrictions and not truncated it.
”We
are still in the woods, we hadn’t broken the chain of spread yet, we needed
some more time at home especially in the affected areas in order to effectively
and efficiently conduct the enhanced surveillance and contact tracing, even if
we couldn’t break the chain, we would have succeeded in reducing the rate of spread,”
Mr Mohammed cautioned. -peacefmonline.com
