Spread the love

By Our Reporter

It is now all doom and gloom for the powerful communist government in its battle against the Covid-19 pandemic. The government enforced lockdown on March 24 when there were less than five asymptomatic cases, and the lockdown remained in place four months while in less than six months, the cases jumped to over 56700 across the country, with 3 71 deaths. The Kathmandu valley alone has 12,924 cases as of Tuesday with detection of over 500 new cases every day. This figure clearly shows that the government has failed in its fight against the Covid-19 in lack of proper strategies and plans.

Instead of making adequate preparations to contain the virus, the government used the lockdown period to consolidate the power of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli resorting to illegal and trivial means. The government wasted energy in introducing controversial constitution amendment bills with an ill intention of breaching Upendra Yadav’s party and capturing the constitutional bodies instead of using lockdown to make isolation wards and other infrastructure required to fight against the virus. Moreover, the ministers and businessmen close to the Prime Minister took the pandemic as an opportunity to make fast buck promoting corruption in purchasing medicines and equipment required to control the virus. PM Oli took the virus lightly telling that Nepali could easily avoid the virus by taking turmeric powder and hot water. But today, Kathmandu has turned into a new hotspot of the virus with over 500 cases and at least five deaths a day.

Now when the caseload and deaths are in the constant rise, the government has decided to open public transportations, flights, hotels and restaurants from today. It has lifted the prohibitory order allowed market places to open. The market of the valley has already started witnessing crowds, and they are sure to further spread the virus.

The government which caused huge damage to the economy by imposing the four-month lockdown unnecessarily is now trying to revive the same at the cost of people’s life. Otherwise, the government should not have taken such suicidal step when the cases and deaths have been rising in Kathmandu and major cities. Resuming transportation means taking the disease to villages from the city. Now Dashain is approaching, and many people from Kathmandu and other cities will return home riding the buses as virus carriers to villages, which are safe till date.

People’s Review Print Edition