Time for a robust law enforcement approach to covid 19 protocol enforcement

Kgosietsile Ngakaagae | Friday July 31, 2020 13:10

Government has done all it can to keep us and our children safe, and we are letting it, and ourselves, down. The outbreaks reported in different parts of Gaborone, doubled the number of cases we have, over a two week period.

Listening to Professor Mosepele Mosepele, you realise that some were cases of sheer irresponsibility. We should all be concerned. South Africa, offers us the best example of what happens when people fail to heed advice on COVID-19. People die.

There is a sad dynamic, though. Many of the now reported cases are children. Some schools, have been temporarily closed. Our children are affected and are traumatised. Their families are traumatised and must go into quarantine.

These children did not cross the border illegally, and import the virus into the country. These children certainly did not refuse to self-quarantine, or to sanitise. These children depend on us to keep them safe. We are letting our children down. Unless we change, our children will die. God, forbid, that any family should bury its own, just because of one, or two peoples irresponsibility.

We got off on a good a good note. The nation was energised, and rallied behind the Task Force and government efforts. Lockdown made us appreciate the severity of the pandemic. We watched helplessly from behind our walls as our businesses collapsed.

Not only our freedoms, but our livelihoods were taken away. Plenty of Batswana had to fall back on the food basket, and government had to initiate an expensive wage subsidy scheme to ensure that businesses had a chance of survival. Only recently, the tourism industry, the second biggest foreign revenue earner began to open up. Our national airline, returned to the skies. Now we are on the verge of going back to where it all began, all because of some people’s irresponsibility.

Well, I personally hate it. I hate it when my liberties are taken away because someone else, has been irresponsible. I don’t want to lose more money than I have lost already, with my business closing down, all because someone else has been irresponsible.

I don’t want to live in a state of emergency. I don’t want to be scared to hug my daughter because I could be bringing COVID-19 home. Irresponsibility is interfering with our economy, our health, our relationships, our children’s education, and our democracy. It is stalling the national development agenda.

The question is; when will we ever learn as a people? The bitter lessons of the lockdown months seem to elude us all too easily. For once, let us not blame alcohol, alone. Some outlets have indeed acted irresponsibly and continue to do so. But such can be dealt with separately.

One way of doing that, is to further restrict the operating hours of those specific outlets for a given period, as punishment. Allow them only three hours in a day and there should be no warnings. Give those powers to the police, in the same way they can detain people for forty hours, before seeking judicial consent.  For a second offence, just revoke the licence. There is no need to punish the entire industry for one person’s selfishness and irresponsibility.

It is important as society to ensure that we police our neighbourhoods. Chill sessions must end. Irresponsible individuals are causing the liquor industry, and the fiscus, humongous amounts of money. In essence, the cost is always passed on to somebody else.

That is why I do not agree with those that blindly agitate for lockdowns. Irresponsible people should not be allowed to hold the public at ransom. We need to be more robust in our approach to COVID-19 protocol compliance. The task team and the relevant government ministries are doing a terrific job, in information dissemination and public education. We are at a stage where we all know what to do. We have no reason to be behaving the way we are behaving.

But then, alcohol cannot always be the scapegoat. Alcohol does not cause people to cross to South Africa through un-gazetted points. Alcohol does not cause people to break quarantine rules. None of all the people I see wearing masks wrongly, looked drunk, and I certainly didn’t see them at liquor outlets. A significant section of our population is irresponsible.

We still have people who wear face-masks, as they wear a necklace. Some only cover their mouths leaving their noses exposed. When you walk out into the street, nearly half the population is doing just that. In essence, a fair section of the population, is refusing to wear masks.

It is time for government to crack the whip. Until the Police Commissioner declares zero tolerance to the problem of wearing face masks wrongly, nothing will change. The nation, will continue to be imperilled. In the end, we collectively bear the costs of such irresponsible conduct.

Fellow citizens, we all need to do more to ensure protocol compliance. In the same vein, we cannot have a situation where the efforts of government and of responsible citizens are frustrated by irresponsibility of a few.

The Police must be given extended powers to deal specifically with non-compliance. That must include 48-hour detentions and 48-hour business closures. We can’t be held at ransom by irresponsible people.