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Tuesday, March 18, 2025

PM lays out case for extending SoE, maintaining curfew hours

by

Renuka Singh
1303 days ago
20210822
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.

Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has made a case for keep­ing the 9 pm to 5 am cur­few and for ex­tend­ed the State of Emer­gency (SoE) by an ad­di­tion­al three months.

Dr Row­ley yes­ter­day de­fend­ed the cur­few pe­ri­od in a text ex­change with Guardian Me­dia, say­ing that it was nec­es­sary to re­duce move­ment and con­gre­gat­ing that could trig­ger a third wave of the COVID-19 virus.

“The cur­few re­duces mix­ing and con­gre­ga­tion of peo­ple where it is not nec­es­sary to have such ex­po­sure 9:00 pm to 5:00 am,” he said.

Mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, have asked for the cur­few hours to be re­laxed, with the Cham­ber sug­gest­ing that it be­gins at mid­night in­stead of 9 pm.

“This ap­proach is the most pru­dent in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty and like­li­hood of fac­ing a pos­si­ble Delta virus chal­lenge,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the cur­few would al­so sup­press the an­tic­i­pat­ed “free­dom par­ty­ing”.

“That is sure to fol­low any re­moval of the re­stric­tions,” he said.

Dr Row­ley al­so said that the ex­tend­ed cur­few cou­pled with the con­tin­ued vac­ci­na­tions would give “us the best chance to sup­port and sus­tain the gains we have made so far”.

The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will break from re­cess on Wednes­day to de­bate the mo­tion for the ex­ten­sion which the Prime Min­is­ter will pi­lot and which can be passed with a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty, not re­quir­ing Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had is­sued a me­dia re­lease Fri­day say­ing that with­out the req­ui­site da­ta to sup­port the ex­ten­sion, the move would be “dis­as­trous”.

But the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day said it was nec­es­sary to main­tain an “ag­gres­sive vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve na­tion­wide to have a larg­er pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion vac­ci­nat­ed be­fore we open up fur­ther”.

Dr Row­ley said that the aim was to “get more chil­dren vac­ci­nat­ed so that they can get back to school once we hold or im­prove the in­fec­tion lev­els and rate of in­fec­tion”.

“Be­cause we have al­ready opened up so much of the coun­try for eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and job re-es­tab­lish­ments we have to bal­ance that with strong re­stric­tions in the low­er pri­or­i­ty ar­eas,” he said.

“All of this is to be ac­com­pa­nied by the san­i­tiz­ing, mask-wear­ing and of course the SOE en­forces the “ no con­gre­ga­tion” of a pop­u­la­tion that is weary of Covid,” Row­ley said.

He said that the pop­u­la­tion, if not prop­er­ly guid­ed, could ex­hale and re­lax too quick­ly with one un­want­ed out­come.

“That is a re­turn to a full lock­down in an in­evitable third wave,” he said adding that some coun­tries are cur­rent­ly tot­ter­ing un­der a fourth wave.

“We must avoid that,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced the State of Emer­gency on May 15 and it is set to ex­pire at the end of Au­gust. This ex­ten­sion now takes the SoE to No­vem­ber.

On Thurs­day At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said that the SoE had borne a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fruit in that it has al­lowed an im­prove­ment in the bed avail­abil­i­ty at the par­al­lel health fa­cil­i­ties.

The AG said then that one pro­vi­sion in the SoE al­lowed for a broad­er cat­e­go­ry of per­son to ad­min­is­ter the vac­cines in­clud­ing med­ical and den­tal in­terns and vets.

Al-Rawi said that the ex­ist­ing Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance did not give as ro­bust a struc­ture as the State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.

Since the an­nounce­ment of the ex­ten­sion, var­i­ous cham­bers have come in sup­port of it but re­quest­ed that the tim­ing be ad­just­ed to mid­night to 5 am in or­der to give busi­ness­es more open­ing hours.

Al-Rawi said that the pow­er to de­ter­mine the hours of the cur­few rests with the Prime Min­is­ter.

COVID-19 claims six more lives

The Min­istry of Health an­nounced yes­ter­day that six more peo­ple had died from the virus, tak­ing the num­ber of deaths up to 1,225.

A fur­ther 71 have been in­fect­ed.

Mean­while, the num­ber of first dose vac­ci­na­tions moves clos­es to half a mil­lion, now stand­ing at 483,269 with a fur­ther 367,691 hav­ing gone on to re­ceive sec­ond dos­es.

At present, the coun­try has hun­dreds of thou­sands of World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO)-ap­proved vac­cines - Sinopharm, As­traZeneca, Pfiz­er and John­son & John­son - avail­able at mass vac­ci­na­tion sites and health cen­tres across the coun­try.

Per­son­al & do­mes­tic ser­vices, re­al es­tate re­sume

Per­son­al ser­vices, all do­mes­tic ser­vices and re­al es­tate ser­vices will re­sume op­er­a­tions to­day.

The Min­istry of Health not­ed yes­ter­day that spas, hair­dressers, hair and beau­ty tech­ni­cians and bar­bers can op­er­ate un­til fur­ther no­tice, Mon­day through Sun­day.

“Op­er­a­tors, em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers of the per­son­al ser­vices and re­al es­tate es­tab­lish­ments as well as home­own­ers and do­mes­tic work­ers are ad­vised to com­ply strict­ly with the (oth­er) le­gal re­quire­ments of the Emer­gency Pow­ers (No. 2) Reg­u­la­tions, 2021, the le­gal re­quire­ments of the Pub­lic Health [2019 Nov­el Coro­n­avirus (2019-nCoV)] (No. 18) Reg­u­la­tions, 2021 and the pub­lic health guide­lines,” the Health Min­istry said.


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