On Saturday the administration ordered a total lockdown of Dhaka and Narayanganj cities, and Madaripur and Gaibandha districts to fight the spread of coronavirus. This included lockdown of areas where Covid-19 patients have been found. The authorities directed all garment factories, except the ones making personal protective equipment, to remain closed until further notice. Division among influential owners over the closure of RMG factories and an absence of specific instructions from the government had sent thousands of workers into a dangerous scramble to get back to Dhaka. But when they arrived, many found that the owners had changed their minds. The administration must stop this dilly dallying to give specific instructions as to whether who will be allowed to enter Dhaka and other cities and who won’t.
We are barely at the period where the pandemic will spread exponentially–all pandemics experience a bell curve for growth and we have yet to reach the curve. Instead of taking coherent farsighted measures we are taking ad hoc measures. We need stringent lockdown protocols in every single village and town–but that has yet to happen. People are still loitering beside road stalls to have food, people are still going out without wearing masks and as such no effective mechanism is in place to prevent these gatherings. We seem to be entirely at the mercy of the ability of the virus to propagate itself. Only time will tell whether the lockdown worked or not–it should have been implemented much earlier. The administrations lackadaisical attitude must change. This is not a soap opera.
We must say the preventive measures taken by the authorities concerned to fight the pandemic are not adequate enough to meet the crisis. In particular, the sufferings of RMG workers have proved that there is no coordination among the government departments and other private bodies.
