Bartica Mayor, Gifford Marshall says the municipality supports the special restrictive measures imposed on Region Seven and reminded residents that they each have an individual responsibility.
In an interview with Stabroek News on Tuesday, Marshall noted while the National Task Force has implemented measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the region, all residents and stakeholders need to be onboard and adhere to the measures. “So we cannot over-emphasise the need for individual responsibility in this pandemic,” the mayor said.
According to the measures, published in the Official Gazette on Monday, non-essential travel in or out of Region Seven has been restricted during the period of December 1st to December 31st and only essential travel in accordance with identified essential services will be permitted.
Additionally, gatherings in Region Seven are not allowed to exceed five persons and physical distancing guidelines are to be observed. The Regional Democratic Council is expected to ensure that government buildings, landings and transportation are sanitised.
The Mayor mentioned that as was discussed in the region’s COVID-19 task force meeting, they are asking that the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development support the municipality of Bartica in its sanitisation and sensitisation efforts. He noted that previously they had conducted sanitisation of the markets and open spaces, but however, as of recent the support for those activities has not been forthcoming.
When asked about how businesses will be affected by the restriction on travel to the region, Marshall said that it may have a bigger impact on the tourism or hospitality sector in the town and the region. “We are working with the businesses because we realise that this time of the year we don’t want persons to be sent home and we don’t want a major economic crisis while at the same time we have to be wise because we have to protect the residents,” he explained.
As it relates to the mining sector, he noted that there wouldn’t be much of an impact on mining as the measures gave no special directives for that sector. However, he informed that in a matter of weeks a number of the mining camps will be closed and persons will be traveling home.
“Again that is a concern for us because you’re aware of our porous borders and the number of Venezuelans we have in the mining area, so again we implore individual responsibility especially for the miners who will be returning home for the holidays because we have thousands of miners from all over Guyana and the last thing we want to happen is for those miners to take the virus home to their families,” Marshall remarked.
With that he expressed the hope that those miners make use of the checkpoints across the region and the various testing sites as they make their way home.
Meanwhile, Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony, during Tuesday’s COVID-19 update stated that the task force bases its guidelines on the epidemiological situation in the country at the current time.
“As you would see from our statistics in Region Seven that we have had a persistent increase in numbers. It has stabilised now around 62 and we will continue to observe and to bring those numbers down so that’s why we have put the restrictions there,” the Minister said.
The minister noted that as long as the numbers were reduced and the task force and ministry is satisfied, they have made provision for the health minister to lift those restrictions as long as the ministry is satisfied that cases have stabilised or decreased significantly.
He assured that currently, the region has the necessary infrastructure in place to handle COVID-19 cases efficiently.
