While balancing public health considerations amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Union Government has granted permission to reopen factories after inspections for complying with health guidelines, along with accepting migrant workers returning from neighbouring countries through border checkpoints.
In fact, these two issues are great challenges for the county, amidst the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Factory closures arising from the coronavirus have disrupted business activities and impacted on the socio-economic lives for workers around the world, including in Myanmar. Opening factories complying with health guidelines can help to bring about economic recovery.
Meanwhile, Myanmar migrant workers, whose numbers may be as great as 100,000, are returning home by crossing borders during the COVID-19 outbreak and rainy season, which always brings with it influenza and dengue fever.
Still, we can contain the coronavirus infection in our country, in which only 161 positive cases have been reported. However, after two days with no cases of infection, six positive cases were reported yesterday.
This reflects that we are not out of the woods yet, and people should not be negligent in protecting themselves from contracting the infection. People are urged to strictly follow all health guidelines.
It is uncertain whether we will be able to totally contain the disease within the next few months, but there is no place for complacency in the war against this very tricky virus, which is highly contagious, difficult to control and can spread before infected people show symptoms.
Meanwhile, we have seen reports about officials taking actions against those who break the regional orders for containing COVID-19 in some townships.
This situation reflects that the disease also causes unnecessary social problems for the public.
COVID-19 is something we have not encountered before; although it is a fact that all of us have encountered problems before, in one form or the other. A critical need to solve a problem is the power of assessing and reviewing the situation in the correct way. That is called wisdom.
The workers’ knowledge about the virus, and their cooperation with authorities, are of paramount importance in containing the coronavirus infection in our country. Not only workers, but each citizen is responsible to cooperate with the authorities and take appropriate measures, as their contribution is playing an important role in minimizing the risks to our health, as well as the socio-economic impact of the pandemic during this time of crisis.
We would like to urge all our people to remain locked down, or to return to work, with intense mindfulness not only to protect themselves from the disease but also to minimize the nationwide impacts from the pandemic.
GNLM
