PROFESSOR SUNIL J. WIMALAWANSA
COLOMBO : There are differences of opinion on the management of COVID-19 in Sri Lanka, some based on political views and others, either supporting or criticising the handling of the crisis by law-enforcement and the health department. Despite the support from the President and availability of government funding, the failure of managing the COVID by the task force and the health ministry is astonishing, for which the administrative heads of two entities are accountable.
Few examples include the failure to identify the community spread of COVID-19 since April 2020 (when no community testing was done), the inability to control the current island-wide multiple clusters of community-spread, and taking ineffective or even harmful actions that led to economic collapse, devastated jobs and supply chains, and thus harmed the country and people.
Recent ridiculous and impractical decree gazetted by the health minister:
The government “servants” are one of the most privileged groups in the country. Even though many of them did not come to work for months during curfew periods, they continue to receive monthly, taxpayer-funded (or printed money) full salaries. According to the recently Gazetted Order by the health minister in early October 2020, “not keeping a social distance of two meters” is a publishable offense by 6-months in prison. It is noteworthy that government “servants” are appointed or elected to help citizens and to advance the progress of the country. Instead of maintaining the law and order, as per the spokesperson’s repeated verbiage, the current priority of the police seems to have changed to punishing people and putting citizens in prison. When evaluating the overall infringements, as briefly discussed below, most of the mentioned violations are carried by government servants. Let us explore examples of groups that are violating these Orders.
The public routinely observes that when ministers or the president is in the public, they are surrounded by a tightly packed bunch of people, some do not even wear facemasks properly, thus, violating the laws enforced by the health minister. Shouldn’t these wrongdoers be arrested and imprisoned? Besides, people and children are forced to travel in packed vehicles: buses, and trains, even longer distances for work, compelling them to break the law: where is the social distance? Wonder why such double standards?
Each morning, we see more than 30, mostly women loaded in lorries around Colombo, dropping them at a different location for road-cleaning by the company they have hired. Has the government formally exempted them from keeping social distancing laws and not wearing facemasks during the packed travel, or their supervisors and the company are guilty of violating the new law? Ambulances are taking patients with five+ people cramped inside—where is the social distance? Moreover, those who are arrested by the police are transported in groups and placed in cells or a prison together, violating the social distancing law.
According to the police, over 70,000 people were arrested for violation of curfew and the new social distancing law. They were not only treated cold-heartedly but also the way they were handled, which assuredly ignited community spread of the virus. Was there a mandated two-metre distance between people during packed transportation by the police or in prison cells? If not, the police itself is violating the law! Community clusters of the virus in prisons is another example. The author warned the administration in May 2020 regarding this inevitable possibility but apparently took no proactive actions to ease it.
During the “search and arrest” operations conducted by 20,000+ army intelligence service soldiers (paid by the taxpayers), continue to transport people in groups, so as groups of people ‘collected’ from airports to quarantine centres located far away. In the mentioned examples, the company CEOs, policemen, soldiers, and anyone who authorises mass transportation of employees in crowded lorries and busses are breaking the new law. As per the police spokesperson, all of them should be imprisoned. Who is going to do that?
It is impossible to maintain proper social distancing in Sri Lanka. Irrespective of the rules and expectations, banks, supermarkets, schools, public transportation, open markets, hospital clinics, all are crowded. This is in part due to a lack of resources, crowded suburbs, and the culture, and the social system in Sri Lanka. Why haven’t these were thought through before enforcing a law that is impossible to follow?
Curfew caused a lot more harm to people and the country than any minute benefit:
While curfew had little effect on controlling the spread of COVID-19, it caused a major economic collapse, massive unemployment, and increased community deaths in Sri Lanka and in a handful of other countries that used such useless, draconian measures. The accumulating evidence suggests that results from the valueless curfews, brutal treatment of innocent public by the law-enforcement, and thousands of unlawful curfew-related arrests by the police (where a stern warning would have been most appropriate) continue to harm people. While quantitative data are yet to be published, the harm from erroneous policies is continuing.
It is apparent that the mentioned draconian measures, despite complaints from many citizens, were approved by the government. During the process of arresting innocent people and transporting them to quarantine centres or jail, placing people at a higher likelihood of contracting COVID-19 and risking their lives; this is unethical. Moreover, it incurred marked physical and psychological stresses to them that could lead to permanent psychological harm, inducing severe depression, and posttraumatic stress disorders.
Concerned citizens should lobby the President, either to revoke this outrageous Ordinance by the health minister (which is culturally totally unsuitable for Sri Lanka) or issue an executive order to arrest and imprison all law-breaking police and army soldiers and officers, and others. Law must apply equally, to everyone: anyone could get the infection. Just because violators are government servants, they should not be exempted (probably they have the assumption that they have immunity)¾the huge clusters in the Navy and Police have proved otherwise. The President and the new minister of law and order, Hon. Dr. Sarath Weerasekera must take the right actions for the people of Sri Lanka, based on the laws of the country.
The mentioned maltreatments are continuing during the course of the duties of mentioned public servants, who are supposed to “serve, help, and take care of people,” humanly. Treating fellow citizens as dirt by the majority of government servants has now become an epidemic itself in the country. Nevertheless, the fiduciary, accountability, and responsibility for their actions and the lack of transparency, should not be taken lightly. Just wondering what is happening to compassionate mentality, humanistic behaviour, and common-sense, when a person gets into a uniform and the person is presumed to have unlimited power, just as some politicians behave, once they get elected at any capacity. As for the government SERVANTS, shouldn’t they suppose to serve the public?
(Professor Sunil Wimalawansa, MD, Ph.D., MBA, FRCP, FACP, FACE, FRCPath, DSc., Director of Cardiometabolic & Endocrine Institute, New Jersey, U.S.A. University Professor and the former head and the chief of Endocrinology, Metabolism & Nutrition. He holds numerous distinctions as an educator, author, researcher, innovator, executive board member, administrator, and philanthropist.)
