Analysis: State of emergency to prevent spread of Covid-19 will be a privilege for the few – By Adérito Caldeira | A Verdade

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Analysis: State of emergency to prevent spread of Covid-19 will be a privilege for the few – By Adérito Caldeira | A Verdade

2:17 CAT | 30 Mar 2020

Photo: A Verdade

The chorus of voices pressing the President of the Republic to declare a State of Emergency and confine 30 million Mozambicans to their homes for days is oblivious to the impracticality of the decision in a country where 20 million citizens have to leave home to fetch water every day, where only about one million people have a guaranteed salary every month, and where the rest have to at least ‘go to the field’ so that there is no shortage of food.

Yet the upper-middle class, Maputo civil society, the State Council and even the president of Renamo, who lives in a luxury hotel, join in and pressure President Filipe Nyusi to declare a State of Emergency to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, which still the Mozambican capital as its epicentre.

These privileged people, who live in brick houses with water in the tap, sanitation systems and electricity, have jobs where they earn many times the minimum wage and can afford to do a “monthly shop”. They forget that staying indoors for more than one day could spell death for most Mozambicans.

In Mozambique, almost 25 million people do not have drinking water on tap, and every day have to go to standpipes or wells, or even compete with crocodiles for access water to drink, cook and maybe see to their hygiene.

Not being able to leave home means that almost seven million Mozambicans will not be able to earn a daily wage and put food on the table, because only 1.2 million people in our country have a job in the civil service or the private sector with a contract and a salary at the end of the month.

The social distance that is proclaimed by the health authorities is a utopia for the more than 20 million Mozambicans who live in precarious dwellings made of sticks or reeds and held together, in most cases, with mud.

In fact, supposing that the new coronavirus has already been spread among us via various asymptomatic travellers from neighbouring countries and Europe, confining Mozambicans to their homes may just enable the sharing of infection among members of the same family, as is common during cyclical cholera outbreaks that Mozambique experiences.

By Adérito Caldeira

Source: A Verdade