Vajira bashes govt.handling of pandemic

By Piyasena Dissanayake

People pay with their lives for the blunders committed by the government, which mismanaged the pandemic response measures, the UNP said yesterday.

Addressing the media at UNP Headquarters Sirikotha, UNP Chairman Vajira Abeywardena said that the government failed in managing the COVID-19 prevention owing to its shortsighted policies.

 “Just take a look at the number of Secretaries appointed to the Ministry of Health since the commencement of the pandemic. The government did nothing but changed the officials. Nothing meaningful was done to prevent the crisis. Now people die in their hundreds. Our leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said that a separate committee should be appointed under the guidance of the WHO to manage the pandemic. Every other country in the world has such mechanisms; only Sri Lanka does not have one. Instead, we have a committee to attend to COVID-19 related matters but it has no powers. They have no legal powers. As per the provisions of the Constitution, it is the Cabinet that has the powers to run the country and those powers cannot be transferred to another body. At the outbreak of this crisis, our leader warned that the government should get its act together and take preventive measures. The government did not listen to his advice but laughed at him. The government got health workers to disinfect public places. That measure was nothing but a media show. That disinfection show is now over. Then they did the stupidest thing to do when there were reports of COVID-19 infected people. The government took them from their homes and sent them to distant places such as Kandakadu and spent millions of rupees to keep them there. That too did not work.

“The problem with this government is that it is not ready to listen to the experts. The experts called for the shutting down of the airport before the virus came into the country. The government did not listen. Then there was a call for placing orders to purchase the vaccine on time, but the government did not listen. Thereafter, the experts again urged the government to shut down the country in view of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, but that call was not heeded. Now the experts are calling for an immediate lockdown without letting this crisis turn worse.”