Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Chiedu Ebie, stated this on Saturday while the state’s Task Force on the Enforcement of the directive was monitoring the situation around the Asaba, the state capital.
He told newsmen that local government council chairmen across the state had been mandated to set up makeshift markets in primary schools within the communities to enable residents purchase food items.
According to Ebie, nobody is trying to punish anybody or step on anybody’s right. I appeal to all residents and Deltans to please take the exercise very seriously.
Ebie called on those “sufficiently educated, exposed and enlightened” to inform others, who because of religious beliefs or misinformation, are unaware of the dangers of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus.
Also speaking, Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr Hafiz Inuwa, appealed to Deltans to be patient with security operatives while identifying themselves.
“We have addressed the issue of harassment severally. Our people are very inpatient, sometimes there might be queue and you have to identify yourself. It is that process of waiting on the queue as a result of identifying yourself that was where people do complain, otherwise once we confirm that you are a medical officer, either private or public, we allow you to go and discharge your duties,” he explained.
On his part, Commissioner for Information, Charles Aniagwu, called for increased cooperation from Deltans, saying that the lockdown was in their best interest.
“As per the reason why we are shutting down, why we have to enforce it because we believe in people not moving out of our state or coming in so that we can isolate whoever that must have contracted the virus and treat the person. But when people fail to comply, it makes things very difficult; it means that after the two weeks they would make the job of government very difficult and we don’t hope to cause an extension.
Aniagwu called for the cooperation of Deltans during the two-week lockdown in order to allow the state government deal with the virus and avoid an extension. “It’s important that we know that the essence of these whole thing is to stop the coronavirus from spreading to our state, or in an event that it comes, we are able to arrest the spread, that’s the essence”, he said.
“We know it’s affecting our economy but life is far more important than our economy; we know how to wake up our economy but we don’t know how to wake up a dead man. This is because after the pandemic, we can make the economy to recover, but anybody who dies as a result of the virus cannot be brought back to life after the challenge,” Aniagwu said.
Francis Sadhere, Warri
