TOTAL 525 teams of Bangladesh Army are performing various activities to aid the local administration amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Bangladesh Army on Wednesday said its members would resort to tough action from Thursday against people not maintaining social distancing and violating home quarantine rules to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Strict action will be taken against those who would disobey instructions issued by the government. The army has been working from March 25 under “in aid to civil power.” Earlier on March 23, the government decided to deploy members of Armed Forces — Army, Navy and Air Force – to tackle the coronavirus situation. Members of the armed forces were deployed on March 24. Bangladesh announced the death of another coronavirus patient on Wednesday and three new cases. So far, the country has confirmed six COVID-19 deaths and 54 cases.
It is unfortunate that we have to rely on the army for the social distancing monitoring and not the police or other security forces. Whenever there is a national emergency we call upon the army. It is unacceptable that even after all these years we have not been able to produce civil administration officials who should have been able to do what the army does. No other nation in the world has called upon the army to help in the COVID-19 fight except China–at least not for social distancing. The army is playing a behind the scenes role in many countries like the US Army’s Virus Research Lab which has geared up to fight COVID-19. But even in neighbouring countries the Army has not been called upon to do a duty which should essentially be reserved for civil defence.
Instead of relying upon the Army to tell us to not go out we must rely upon ourselves and become more self-disciplined as a nation. We can’t use the Army as a recipe to cure any social ills or be there for social disasters. Social and individual discipline is the need of the hour–not over reliance on any single institution.
