By Patrick Oboi Amuriat
I take this opportunity on behalf of the Forum for Democratic Change to greet Ugandans in the name of our Lord. To our Muslim brothers and sisters we continue to say Ramadan Kareem.
The FDC wishes to call for a measured unlocking of the country to ease on the suffering of the people which is now more than COVID-19 itself.
The times are very hard. People are starving in their homes, they cannot easily access medication while a significant number are getting depressed. Domestic violence is rampant.
Security personnel continue to abuse people’s human rights. People are losing jobs . Companies are collapsing. The junta has unconstitutionally silenced the opposition and is using the de-facto State of Emergency powers to tighten its grip on power. Some kind of COVID-19 induced POMA.
The Coronavirus pandemic has had devastating effects in China, Europe and America and we as a country were right to exercise caution by observing medical expert ‘s prescribed measures which included calling for the lockdown of the country. The measures were accepted and strictly followed by almost the entire population. As a result, the country is harvesting good dividends from what we have all invested.
God has assisted us and we are all thankful. Even with our ill -equipped and less sophisticated equipment, facilities manned by medical staff who were not well protected and not sufficiently motivated, the admirable frontline experts have done great and commendable work which has resulted in most of our COVID -19 patients being successfully treated, discharged and reintegrated into their communities.
The African continent is the only one that has so far registered the least deaths of all the continents. But for us in Uganda to start parting ourselves on the backs seeing our performance as better than that of China, Europe and North America in combating COVID-19 because we have not registered death will be reckless.
It is empirically known that flu epidemics or even pandemics of the past, never had devastating effects here as it did in the colder parts of the world. Even before COVID-19, influenza was still killing more people in those cold places in thousands every year.
We wish to call on the Ministry of Health to move fast and embark on mass community testing for the virus and ensuring tough measures on cross border travelers.
Without minimizing the danger Coronavirus poses to us, we believe that medical experts advice and guidance, the country is ready for a partial easing on lockdown. This will also ease the mounting pressure from the population with sections of it already totally defying government directives.
The writer is the FDC Party president