Category: zimbabwe

Herald Reporter

Tobacco auction floors will be decentralised this year to avoid concentrations of people with accommodation modalities and the days on which farmers should visit the auction floors now being worked out.

This was revealed by President Mnangagwa yesterday while fielding questions from journalists at State House after delivering his speech on the national lockdown.

“With regards to the tobacco sector, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board has been sitting and consulting our (Covid-19 Inter-Ministerial) Taskforce and they have come to an arrangement where the tobacco auction floors are going to be decentralised countrywide to minimise crowding,” said the President.

“In the process, they are going to observe the measures, that is social distancing, and also the question of accommodation will be regulated as to who comes and on which day, because the areas of concentration will be limited in terms of the centralisation.”

The 2020 tobacco auction floors were set to open today.

The tobacco marketing season normally starts mid March, but that was put on hold because of the health threat posed by Covid-19.

Farmers are expected to get half their earnings in United States dollars with the rest in local currency at the prevailing interbank rate.

In anticipation of the opening of the marketing season, it is understood that TIMB is in the process of engaging the Ministry of Health and Child Care on safety and precautionary measures to be taken during the season in the wake of the pandemic.

The date for the opening of the auction floors is yet to be announced.

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Public health requirements meant that yesterday President Mnangagwa had to extend the lockdown for a further two weeks, but using this period of tight controls on movement to continue restarting the economy by adding mining and manufacturing to agriculture as permitted economic activity.

Basically, Government faced two options: Either maintain the lockdown, with controlled adjustments, or end the lockdown but put in place a wide range of controls. The actual outcome would probably be the same, but there are advantages in maintaining the lockdown, but widening the list of exemptions.

Under a lockdown, all movement and congregating of people is banned except what is specifically permitted. Under a controlled lifting everything would be permitted except what was banned.

In the early steps of restarting an economy, the first option is easier to enforce and operate.

Under the initial lockdown regulations, defined essential services and businesses were permitted to operate and people were allowed out of their homes to buy food and medicines, and in many areas to collect water.

The next sectors to gain exemption were farming, farmers’ markets and food markets, although these were permitted on condition a range of public health controls were enforced. This has ensured people can eat during the lockdown, but in some areas more effective enforcement is still required.

Mining was an obvious sector to be next on the exemption list, since almost all mines have all their staff living in company housing near the mine.

This allows easier control of staff. Mining companies will, however, have to take precautions and follow health rules. Visitors to mine housing complexes can, and must, be controlled and workers can be checked as they enter workplaces and when they return to the staff housing.

At work they will be maintaining social distance. Employers will need to have policies in place to deal with any potential outbreak of Covid-19 and for enforcing quarantine rules if a worker has to stay at home.

The opening of manufacturing, essential for economic reasons, will need high levels of cooperation between factory owners and informal manufacturing complexes on one hand and health experts on the other.

This can be done, largely because both formal and informal manufacturing is not done on the street in public. Factories and manufacturing complexes in the informal sector have gates, so staff and others can be checked on entry and social distancing, good hygiene and other rules can be easily enforced.

The restart of manufacturing may well require some thought to be given to public transport. Zupco has been managing to move essential workers without strain, and can cope with more as most buses now running can take extra passengers without breaching seating rules and many buses can do more trips in a day.

But if extra transport is needed then Zupco should be allowed to work out ways its franchised kombi fleet can be brought back into service. This might require a change in the subsidy system temporarily to allow seating rules to be enforced, but Zupco has shown it can enforce rules on its franchised services for both large buses and kombis.

As mines, factories and informal manufacturing re-start, the Government and health authorities will learn a great deal over what is needed, where enforcement is easy and where hard, and how people react to precautions.

This will be needed as further sectors are reopened to business, so that each step can be carefully taken without adding to our dangers.

The Government must have learned a lot from the original need to keep essential services, including food shops, open. All supermarkets now insist on a set of simple rules: the number of customers in the shop at any one time is limited, with those waiting expected to queue with adequate social distancing; all customers entering the shop have to sanitise their hands; a growing number of supermarkets now have those simple temperature scanners; and opening and closing hours are enforced.

People are ready to follow these rules; indeed many go beyond them by maintaining greater than minimum social distancing and most understand why they cannot all crowd together in the shopping aisles. What might be needed now is a large supply of those temperature scanners. Every business will probably need one for several months until the Covid-19 threat is finally declared over.

The other critical point the President made was the need for enhanced Government support of the vulnerable. Covid-19 has accelerated the long-needed reform in this area with the direct payment system, and eventually all subsidies can be dropped with the budget for these added to be payments made to those who need help, rather than being spent on rich and poor alike.

Other areas where the Covid-19 threat has seen substantial progress is the upgrade in health facilities, work still in progress, another reason for continuing the lockdown, but something that will still be there long after the threat has subsided.

So long as Government, business sectors and the people take the lockdown extension positively and act highly responsibly with the widening list of exempted areas, it will be far easier to add more exemptions until we reach the stage where it is simpler to end the lockdown but have a set of tight controls. It is up to everyone to show we can all be trusted to follow public health rules to make that desirable switch possible.

Rumbidzayi Zinyuke in MUTARE and Lovemore Kadzura in RUSAPE

The Covid-19 isolation centre at Mutare Infectious Diseases Hospital has been taken over by the Ministry of Health and Child Care, so that rehabilitation of the unit can be accelerated.

Mutare City Council struggled to meet the April 18 deadline for completion of rehabilitation works due to challenges.

The transfer by Government effectively puts running of the hospital under the Ministry to ensure a co-ordinated approach in the fight against Covid-19.

Speaking during a tour of health institutions in Manicaland on Saturday, Deputy Chair of the Covid-19 Inter-Ministerial Taskforce, Defence and War Veterans Affairs Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, said health institutions in Manicaland needed more resources and she called for a collective approach in enhancing preparedness.

“I am not happy because our health institutions are not well resourced and this requires us to go back and put in place a programme to assist hospitals in the provision of isolation centres,” she said.

Minister Muchinguri-Kashiri said it was important that there be some central authority pushing for the capacitation of hospitals.

She demanded that timeframes for the completion of works at the hospitals be put in place.

“As it is, we are really worried that Manicaland is not ready to take up patients in an emergency,” said Minister Muchinguri-Kashiri.

“We really need to push and increase workforce on the ground to make sure that all construction work is completed.”

Minister of State for Manicaland Provincial Affairs Dr Ellen Gwaradzimba said the decision to take over Mutare Infectious Diseases Hospital was necessary as it would consolidate efforts to fight the pandemic.

“Although Mutare Provincial Hospital is much better in terms of preparedness, they still need more equipment,” she said.

“Mutare Infectious Diseases Hospital still has a long way to go.”

Workforces would be mobilised, including those of the council, the Department of Public Works, the Zimbabwe National Army and other stakeholders to speed up the construction and renovation processes.

Funds for the superstructure and equipment is already there and work will start in earnest from today.

Last week, Government released $1,4 million, while Mutare City Council injected $1,5 million towards the procurement of equipment for the Mutare Infectious Diseases Hospital isolation centre.

Funds for the structural renovations to the tune of $1,6 million were raised by businesses operating under the auspices of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries in Mutare.

Manicaland Acting Provincial Director, Dr Munyaradzi Mukuzunga, said the Ministry of Health and Child Care was prioritising Victoria Chitepo Provincial Hospital for renovation as the provincial referral unit.

Space has been allocated for an intensive care unit at the hospital, with a capacity of 14 beds, once renovations are complete. Mutare Infectious Disease Hospital has been earmarked for four ICU beds and oxygen infrastructure, infrastructural works and equipment.

When fully refurbished, the provincial hospital will have six high dependence units and 20 ordinary beds for Covid-19.

All district hospitals are earmarked to have a minimum of 20 beds, each with oxygen infrastructure. There will be smaller isolation units to ensure widespread reach and to avoid moving patients.

Dr Mukuzunga said they were looking at about 23 facilities in Manicaland Province.