Lockdown: Most families and individuals are really struggling to survive due to the unavailability of money and lack of government’s support

The advantages of the Coronavirus lockdown to the preservation of lives and the curtailing of the spread of the virus cannot be overlooked.

The responsiveness of governments across the continent to put human lives above parochial politics is highly commendable.

Also, the imposition of the lockdown will surely go a long way to help nations contain the virus and likely win the fight against the COVID-19 within a relatively shorter period.

However, the disadvantages or discomforts of the lockdown on people in Africa are gross, unquantifiable and grave.

Ghana has imposed a 14-day lockdown on people in two for the most industrious cities of the country: Accra and Kumasi (Remember Accra covers Tema and Kasoa).

People in Accra and Kumasi are largely informal workers and artisans who live from hand to mouth. Others are contractual workers whose daily livelihood depends on their routines.

The drivers, seamstress, hairdresser, shoemakers, and hawkers survive primarily on the pinnace they make from their daily sales and services.

Those who found themselves in the offices or the formal workers have been placed or redundancy list or laid off…their means of livelihood is far gone. The teachers are home and they have to rely on their little savings, if they have some at all, to stay above waters.

A huge chunk of the population has families or people who depend on them on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to get by. Now all these people have been quarantined or placed under lockdown to virtually starve to death.

The politicians and other privileged people have insurance, investments, allowances or savings that cushion their efforts in this terrible lockdown period. For the insensitive ones, they stick their necks out of their glass windows to snare at the sufferings of the ordinary Ghanaian who has to resort to the drinking of gari soakings with a pinch of groundnut to live.

Nobody is disputing the essence of the lockdown but how can a government put his people under lockdown without providing them the needed support. Will it be an offense if the government is described as ‘insensitive?’

It has taken the benevolence of some well-to-do individuals to feed the people on the street but I can confidently say that majority of the people locked indoors need those free snacks and food critically.

How can we tell our people to stay indoors and not come out, when at the end of the day, they will still have to pay for their rents, school fees, electricity, water, food, and healthcare. This is the time, the government must support all households with free electricity and water and even possibly give each person a reasonable stipend as they are under the lockdown.

The lockdown will yield a partial result when people starve to death or have to still be thinking of their bills or run into debts. As people stay indoors, demand for utilities goes up, not to talk of food and groceries.

People run out to be beaten and manhandled by these security personnel not because they so wish…it is for survival sake. There is an Akan proverb that says: ‘When you meet the rodent on a run during a hot afternoon, then something is pursuing it’. That is exactly why people are on the street regardless of the brutality they will suffer. The system is hard and they need to survive.

We can’t allow ourselves to be deliberately blinded and turn deaf ears to the wailings and crying of our people in their closet. They have to run away from Coronavirus but they now have to deal with starvation, debts, and loss of jobs.

It is high time, the president, Nana Akufo-Addo rose m his armchair and looks beyond the feedbacks and reports from his appointees and brings hope and life to the good people of Ghana. As you read this, I will need you to share it until it gets to the Flagstaff house and for something drastic to be done.

We cannot run away from COVID-19 and die to “lockdown woes”. The government has what it takes to help her people and the time is now.

May, God, bless the efforts of all nations as we come out of this Coronavirus debacle.