“My Government, through the
Ministry of Health and Child Care, has put in place measures to minimise the
import of COVID-19 into the country and ensure health safety to all citizens,” said President Mnangagwa as he launched
Zimbabwe’s Coronavirus National Preparedness and Response Plan.
“The National Emergency
Prepared and Response mechanism for surveillance and early detection of any
possible cases was activated and will remain active until after WHO has removed
the global health alert.
“This pandemic surpasses all
that we have experienced before. Around 200 000 people have tested positive
globally and around 7000 have died worldwide.”
This is just a wishful
thinking; Zimbabwe is in no position to protect its citizens from the
coronavirus outbreak!
It is all very well to say the
country has a "surveillance and early detection plan" but another
thing to have an effective and working plan in place.
How many suspected coronavirus
cases have been tested so far? And how many such test can the country do in a
day?
Government has come up with a
US$26 million budget to finance strategies aimed at combating the possible
outbreak and spread of the virus. How many personal protection kits, test kits
and specialist equip such as ventilators with this pittance buy?
Yes Zimbabwe is poor but the
failure to get our priorities right is a serious issue we cannot ignore. For
example, the Minister of Youth, Sport and Culture, Kirsty Coventry, announce
last week that government was spending $23 million and $13 million upgrading
the National Sports, Barbourfield and Sakubva stadium respectively. She did not
say whether the sums are in US$ or Z$. Still, it beggars belief that the nation
should be spending money on prestige projects and pittance on life and death
matters.
But worse still, Mnangagwa
himself allocated US$4.5 million to POLAD members tasked to lobby Western and
SADC nations to demand the lifting of sanctions. A waste of time and money
since the IMF, WB, AfDB and all the other financial institution have all
confirmed that they will not pay Zimbabwe one dollar in financial assistance
even if the sanctions were lifted because the country’s reform programme is “off-track”.
The IMF singled out the country’s
convert money printing – which is fuelling inflation – and the failure to stamp
out corruptions as reasons for abandoning Zimbabwe as failed state beyond the
pale. What IMF has done is confirmed Zimbabwe’s junk financial status and investors,
being a shrewd and savvy lot, have taken note.
As long as Zimbabwe remains a
pariah state there will be no meaningful economic recovery. The coronavirus
outbreak has certainly caught the nation with its pants down! Whatever is in
this Coronavirus National Preparedness and Response Plan, we can be certain it
will be wilfully inadequate for two reasons.
a)
40 years of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and rank lawlessness
earning the country the pariah state label has left the country in economic
ruins with any all but collapsed health care service. We have no human and
material resources with which to fight the virus.
b)
We are not going to make the best use of the little resources we
have because it is in the nature of this Zanu PF regime to be wasteful. After
40 years of corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical rule the regime is set in its
ways; IMF and others have failed to get the regime to reform and not even the Armageddon
threat of the coronavirus will succeed.
Like it or not. Mnangagwa’s
coronavirus preparedness plan is just another example of boastful dog
"claiming to put out the furnace fire with his puny
fart", as the great African writer, Chinua Achebe, so aptly put.
If there is an outbreak of coronavirus in Zimbabwe then the country will have one of the highest per capita death rates in the world. We certainly to no have the resources to throw at the outbreak and we can be certain that this Zanu PF regime’s blundering incompetence will only make a bad situation even worse.
ReplyDeleteThe so called National Emergency Prepared and Response Plan is not worth the paper it is written on and the US$26 million, if it is there at all, will be wasted on luxuries.
It is times like this, of serious and urgent national crisis, that the need for good and competent government is appreciated most. For the last 40 years we have done nothing to end the Zanu PF dictatorship and have paid dearly for our folly. The coronavirus will make the suffering and deaths of the last 40 years shrink into insignificance in comparison to what is coming!
One only hopes that when the coronavirus grime ripper has collected his bumper harvest Zimbabweans will finally wake up to the important task of restoring the individual freedoms and rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections without which it is impossible to have a competent and accountable government.
We call for the nation to be calm as we deal with this first case of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe.
ReplyDeleteFinally, I want to appreciate the professionalism which has been displayed by our medical teams.
It is all very well for Minister Obadiah Moyo to tell the nation to be calm when the regime has done nothing to inspire confidence the country will handle this coronavirus outbreak. How many tests on suspected coronavirus cases has the nation carried out? More significantly, now we know the virus is in our midst, how many tests can the country do a day?
Zimbabwe has had four months warning since the outbreak of the virus to prepare for it and yet it is clear the nation is not even in a position to test suspected cases! Anyone who remains calm is only because he/she has no grasp of the seriousness of our situation and just how ill equip we are to deal with it!
If there was coronavirus outbreak in Zimbabwe, God forbid, then we will be is serious trouble because this Zanu PF regime cannot be trusted to save the nation. The people of Zimbabwe should know by now that Mnangagwa is a corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous thug who cannot be trusted to do anything right.
ReplyDeleteRemember his "Zimbabwe is open for business!" clarion call! It fooled me but not an investor of lender, The IMF and all the other major financial institutions refused to give Zimbabwe even one dollar in financial assistance contrary to Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube's repeated assurance they will. Indeed the IMF and other rest have since publicly announced they are walking out of Zimbabwe because the country's reform program is off-track.
Mnangagwa promised to hold free, fair and credible elections only to blatantly rig the elections.
We should not be surprised to hear Mnangagwa claim that he has a plan to keep the nation safe from coronavirus, he is one given to make such foolish claims. He is the boastful dog who has never put out any fire and yet will never stop boasting! The joke is on us for putting our trust and the nation's fate in the hands of such hopeless hands. After 40 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corrupt and the national economy in ruins; why is Zanu PF still in power!
The planned 40km (25-mile) fence is to be erected on both sides of the Beitbridge Land Port of Entry to “ensure that no undocumented or infected persons cross into the country”, Patricia de Lille, South Africa’s public works minister, said in a statement on Thursday, adding that the move could not be viewed as xenophobic.
ReplyDeleteMore than 271,000 people worldwide have been confirmed as having contracted the coronavirus and 11,280 have died, according to figures by Johns Hopkins University. Some 87,000 people have recovered.
The outbreak reached Africa later than other continents, but almost 40 countries have now confirmed cases
Norman Matara, secretary of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, expressed dissatisfaction over the country’s COVID-19 preparedness, saying only 16 people have been tested to date.
Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown has produced multiple time bombs. The economic collapsed has send unemployment soaring to the dizzying 90% rate and with it poverty – a social and economic time bomb! Decades of under-funding of the country’s health care services has left it is an advance stage of rot and decay; setting off the health time bomb – the coronavirus outbreak has the just upgraded the bomb to a nuclear bomb. SA has every reason to worry because it will not be spared of the fall out.
According to Norman Matara, secretary of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, Zimbabwe has only tested 16 people for coronavirus so far. This is a sick joke!
ReplyDeleteZimbabwe’s health care services has all but totally collapsed, the country is not equipped to handle even a few corona virus patients and has the reason why the country should have left no stone unturned to ensure there is no coronavirus patient in the country. All suspected cases should have been tested and isolated. To have only tested 16 people so far is hardly what one would call proof of preparedness.
There have been two confirmed cases of coronavirus in the country and signs are the individual have been mixing with the public freely for 10 and 7 days respectively. This is just unacceptable!
I totally agree, all this claim of being prepared is just the empty boasting as nonsensical as the dog putting out the fire with its puny fart. What is so infuriating is that Mnangagwa’s puny dog fart is going to cause untold human suffering and deaths!
The tyrant blatantly rigged the July 2018 elections so he can be president and when he is called upon to protect the nation all he has to offer is a puny fart! Mnangagwa must be held to account for the rigged elections, the economic meltdown and the human suffering and deaths that have followed!
The global lender recently said the SMP was off-track due to mixed policy implementation adding that delays and missteps in forex and monetary reforms have failed to restore confidence in the new currency.
ReplyDeleteFinance and Economic Development minister Mthuli Ncube said last week that a second phase of the SMP is in the offing to monitor Zimbabwe on the targets it would have set.
"Having completed the Article IV report, they are coming back next month for recalibration and continuation of the second phase of the Staff Monitored Programme.
They are monitoring us on the targets that we set for ourselves in the first place," Ncube said.
"This is not an imposition by IMF on anyone. We have these targets in our budget; we have monetary targets, TSP targets.
So, we will stick to those targets ourselves, with or without the IMF.
The IMF is there to tell others that we are sticking to our targets." The global lender is considered as the international "Commissioner of Oaths" which gives signal to other lenders on a country. Zimbabwe requires cheap lines of credit to help stave off a debilitating foreign currency crisis which stymies growth.
The IMF should know how this Zanu PF regime is given to distort facts and portray a false image. Like it or not Zanu PF is trying to give the impression the coming IMF visit is proof the regime has been forgiven for failing to keep the agreed reforms on track. The Zanu PF lies will fool the naïve and gullible but not the investors.
Zimbabwe is a pariah state and as long as the country remains a pariah state there will be no meaningful economic recovery. Period!
In a country in which 90% are unemployment and have been living from hand to mouth for decades, most people cannot therefore afford to take a day off from their subsistence lifestyles. Even if they are not feeling well, they will be forced to go out and try to earn a living!
ReplyDeleteIt is poverty that will make it near impossible for us in third world country to enforce a lockout for a few days much less weeks on end.
Corona virus is causing untold suffering and many deaths in the developed countries. It is going to cause untold suffering and deaths in the third world countries especially in countries like Zimbabwe with a broken economy and broken health service!
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ReplyDelete