Recognising blatant disregard by many Guyanese for restrictions on social gatherings during the current pandemic, the National COVID-19 Task Force (NCTF) has moved to establish emergency response and enforcement teams to rectify the situation.
The objective of the teams, which will fall under the auspices of the Ministry of Public Security, is to monitor and respond to reports of persons violating the gazetted measures, including the national curfew and restrictions on gatherings, put in place to stem the transmission of the virus.
“I can tell you that up to a few days ago, a directive was given to the Ministry of Public Security for them to set up a special unit to enforce, not only the advisories and things like the curfew, but also to go into the new hot spots in our interior regions, so that we can arrest, in terms of bringing an end to some of the lawlessness, for the want of a better term, that is going on,” Director of Operations of the COVID-19 Task Force Secretariat Mark Archer told a virtual press conference yesterday morning.
He further explained that the teams will comprise persons from the Guyana Police Force and the Ministry of Public Health and will be deployed to work in areas to enforce the COVID-19 measures.
“They will be charged with the objectives to enforce all COVID-19 emergency measures and be deployed in affected neighbourhoods and places like roadways, mining and logging towns, villages from where we’ve gotten reports that persons are not observing social distancing and other COVID measures,” Archer added.
He noted that the country has not been able to steadily reduce the number of new infections as positive cases continue to rise.
Archer noted that due to the fact that the Police Force might be already burdened, it might not be able to respond immediately or directly to persons violating COVID-19 restrictions and so it was decided that creating a separate unit to handle such reports would be the best approach.
“The Police Force will have to select persons to be a part of teams. And they will be placed in teams in the various police divisions. They will be solely responsible for the enforcement of all COVID-19 emergency measures. Right now, the system is too haphazard, like we just said. Somebody call the police station, and maybe they’re involved in something else or doing something, and it’s all over the place. So we’ve decided to have a singular focus by establishing these response and enforcement teams and hopefully we’ll have a better result from the establishment of these teams,” he further said.
While no definite date was given for deployment, Archer signalled that they may begin work this week.
A week ago, this newspaper observed hundreds of Guyanese continuing to flout the national COVID-19 restrictions on social gatherings despite a rise in the number of local cases being recorded.
Scores of Guyanese gathered at the Kitty seawall, both before and after the start of the nationwide curfew. This newspaper was told that before 6pm, the gathering was larger as some persons visited with their families.
No one was seen wearing masks or practicing any other precautionary measures against COVID-19.
During a drive along the Seawall Road at approximately 6:45pm last Sunday, it was observed that most persons had congregated in the vicinity of the 1823 monument at the Kitty seawall.
Loud music was blasting from parked vehicles as persons danced, consumed alcoholic beverages and sat along the seawall in close proximity to each other. The gathering mirrored that of a regular Sunday evening pre-COVID-19.
Mining
Meanwhile, addressing the monitoring of mining operations, Archer said that there has been a presence of police, health officers and wardens in some mining areas keeping watch of the way operations are being conducted. He also noted that officials from the Ministry of Public Health have been speaking with owners of a number of operations.
Additionally, Archer disclosed that the NCTF will soon gazette new directives and guidelines under which miners would be expected to operate. These directives are likely to be issued this week.
Archer noted that a menu of measures has been recommended to the NCTF and it will have to deliberate before making a decision.
He noted that while this approach is likely to work with organised operations involved in large and medium-scale mining, they face some difficulty with enforcement among small-scale miners. “It is very difficult to manage some of them, but the large scale miners, yes! We can manage those very effectively. We have been in conversation with the associations and we have been in conversation with the owners of those large scale mines,” he said.
As a result of increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the Upper-Mazaruni mining district of Aranka, a two-week lockdown was instituted on Friday to curb the spread of the virus in the area. After approximately 30 cases from the region came from this area, where mining has also been halted.
