Mr.
President, last week, the state of public health emergency was extended by 45
days by the National Assembly instead of the 90 days that was initially
suggested by your government.
We
hope that you will address the nation one more time as this is the time for you
to get closer to the population and be communicating as frequently as possible.
Mr.
President, now that the state of public health emergency has been extended, we
want to hear from your government, how and when would your government help the
citizenry especially with regards to their cost of living since most of the
breadwinners are no more working.
We
appreciate the efforts of Gambians both living within and without who have been
raising money to buy food and sanitary items and giving them to families and
organisations; companies and individuals also pledging through the GCCI
Telethon Fund Raising; pharmacies donating medical items. These are very
laudable gestures indeed! We also thank the Chinese government for providing us
the required equipment through a donation and the worth of the items should be
known to the public for transparency sake.
Mr.
President, it’s still very necessary for your government to intervene as more
needs to be done in assisting your citizens because we don’t know when this
pandemic would come to an end.
Mr.
President, the financial, economic and social implications of the lockdown and
state of public emergency on citizens must be considered.
This
is the right time for government to restore confidence and announce what kinds
of relief support it will be extending to the most vulnerable families, to
businesses and to ordinary workers.
The
electricity and water bills of the population can be waived whilst still
considering the payment of school fees for students when schools reopen.
Mr.
President let us take a look at what is happening around us and from the far
for you to know how best to spend the aids received from the World Bank etc.
Paul
Kagame of Rwanda has distributed food items to Rwandans.
President Ouattara of Cote d’ivore promised to pay school fees of all students and school children for the rest of the year, payment of three months electricity and water and help the needy.
Macky Sall is giving food and household items to the
needy and also taken over water and electricity bill for the next three months.
They have extended tax relief to all business for the current year; paying
salaries to all workers in the government and the private sector during the
crisis. They have allocated huge resources to the media houses for them to do
more in sensitisation, education and information dissemination.
President
Rock Kabore of Bukina Faso will pay three months water and electricity bill for
his citizens and give them food.
President
Isoufou of Niger promised to pay two months water and electricity bills and
provide food items.
President
Gaswani of Mauritania promised to give three months of his salary and every
minister to give his one month salary. He will provide basic commodities to his
citizenry.
Let
us emulate the good things others are doing.
The
money must be used for the purpose intended and for no other purpose. The
Gambian people deserve better. Already World Bank has assisted with 10 million
US dollars and IMF gave us 47.1millon US dollars for budget support
Mr.
President, we salute the Ministry of Health and team for a good job done in
treating two of the affected coronavirus patients and finally discharged. They
have only one more patient to treat for now.
We
hope that they have a budget on how to spend the money given and to account for
every butut at the end of the pandemic.
Now
that the public health emergency has been extended, it will be good to allow
businesses to operate and a curfew time be introduced to allow people to look
for their daily bread.
Finally
Mr. President, government ministries should settle three months bills of the
print media houses they owed and help in the media package of covid-19 both
print and broadcast as many African countries are doing.
Good
day!
