Shutdown will affect people

THE announcement by Prime Minister James Marape regarding the 14-day shutdown is unacceptable and irrelevant.
Why? The ordinary citizens and small SME owners will be greatly affected.
They have felt the pinch of it during the first SOE lockdown for almost a month and the so-called stimulus package did not help one way or the other.
Private employees were the hardest hard hit while public servants were still on the payroll.
There should be balance in between these sectors.
What the Government should be doing is apply restrictions instead of a total ban.
What are these so-called advisors or policy consultants that your Government has employed doing?
Are they milking taxpayers’ money without adequately accessing the situation faced by the private and government sectors as well as the ordinary citizens?
Normal businesses should operate while maintaining strict restrictions such as wearing face masks to access public amenities.
This is the way forward for everyone rather than a complete lockdown.
PNG is not like other developed countries like Australia where unemployed people are put on the doll. The bulk of PNG’s population are subsistence farmers and we survive in the informal sector.
When the Government says lockdown, how are we going to be compensated? Think, think and think about ordinary citizens who struggle to survive and live in a city like Port Moresby.
Schools should operate with a mandatory of wearing masks and maintaining social distancing.
It will definitely affect the school calendar.
Your Government has failed big time for not containing and managing the spread of the virus diligently.

Affected citizen,
POM