Mbabane: Siphofaneni Member of the Parliament Mduduzi ‘Gawuzela’ Simelane has really got tongues wagging especially on social media following his submissions in the House of Assembly where he strongly condemned government’s decision making regarding the coronavirus pandemic.
On a lighter note, Simelane thanked the efforts on the part of government which saw the establishment of local testing facilities. Minister of Health Lizzie Nkosi has been giving an update on the progress of the establishments and that they have started on full operation. Previously, Eswatini has been sending samples for testing in South Africa which interfered with turnaround time with the results taking longer to arrive back home. The initiative to have testing facilities locally will see a prompt releasing of the results, which will be given out on a daily basis.
Changing tune, the MP came hard on government and sought to know what informed the government’s decision to move from the previous partial lockdown to the current running partial lockdown.“What informed government’s decision to change from the previous partial lockdown to the current partial lockdown?” asked the MP. He stated that during the first partial lockdown a lot came to a standstill including public transport, which was instructed to operate on specific times with a load of a specific number of passengers, which equated to 60% of full capacity. Simelane wanted to know if there were any scientific studies conducted to qualify government to decree the more relaxed partial lockdown.
He talked about the rising number of COVID-19 cases, which contradicted government’s relaxing of the regulations. He mentioned that the situation was now worse in light of the rising new cases without travel history, which proves that the country is now lent on local transmission, enough to trouble the authorities. Simelane raised a concern about the country being boycotted by the international community due to relaxing the regulation, while other countries were bent on stricter measures to curb COVID-19. He wanted to know why Eswatini had resorted to do things differently. He said with the rising numbers of COVID-19 cases Eswatini would be labeled a high risk country.
The more relaxed partial lockdown was introduced by the Prime Minister Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini under the command of His Majesty King Mswati III. The PM mentioned that this partial lockdown would be more relaxed with more businesses returning to work while a few remain locked.
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