Even though the regulation of the state of emergency (SoE) stated that using face mask is mandatory at public areas to prevent the outbreak of COVID 19, the law is not properly applied at the current situation.
Police also warn abusing the laws has a punishment up to death.
According to Capital’s observation in different corner of Addis Ababa the use of face mask is rare especially in crowded places.
The trend, at major busy areas like Merkato and public bus transportation areas, continued as usual, even though the state of emergency enforce the use of any kind of mouth and nose coverage at public places.
The regulation of SoE article 4 sub article 6 indicated that using masks or face coverage at banks, market places, public transport and terminals, shops, drug stores, public service areas and other mass gathering areas is a mandatory. The same article sub article 7 clearly states that the mask can be any type including homemade or any kind of scarves.
Commander Fasika Fanta, Public Relation head of Addis Ababa Police Commission, said that the city Police Commission observed the use of face mask is rare. “We evaluated the situation of applying the SoE on covering the face is not being properly followed and we will work on correcting it immediately,” he told Capital.
He said that to narrow the gap the Addis Ababa Police Commission in collaboration with Federal Police and representatives of Ministry of Peace is taking strict measures as of Wednesday April 15.
“Due to the holiday season in the past few days the security has been highly focusing on religious areas to make sure that the public did not gather at churches,” he said. “Thursday prayer and Good Friday we have focused on church areas at the same time alerting the public at big market areas and insisted the public to use face mask besides keeping the social distance.”
“We also evaluated the situation at Merkato and Janmeda and we decided that it should be corrected regarding using face masks,” Fasika added.
Jeylan Abdi, Public Relation Head at Federal Police Commission, said that the public is not using the mask as per the expectation, but the public is cooperating and listening the orders of the federal police members who are in duty.
“So far we understand that the public does not internalized the situation and we also get information that there are members of the community that never have heard about the measures that they have to take to keep themselves safe from the virus,” he said.
“We have got such kind of less informed community members that does not have access for media such as those who are engaged on the daily laborer work at the highly congested market place at Merkato,” Jeylan told Capital.
To expand the awareness and address those who are far from media the Federal Police will start sharing information on megaphone in those mass public gathering areas, according to Jeylan.
“Mainly we are focusing on alerting the public to keep their social distance and if it is difficult we advise them to cover their faces,” he said.
Jeylan said that the regular criminal code like article 514 gives a right for attorney general to sue those that disregard the law to punish them from simple imprisonment to death penalty.
He said that “a simple example is that an individual that transported dwellers against the regulation of the SoE was punished 1,500 birr on Thursday.”
“Others that might consider to go against the law of the country and the SoE will face serious punishment according to the country’s laws,” he added.
He advised the public to keep its health by properly applying the recommendations and orders from the policy force.
“The SoE is issued to keep the health of the society itself due to that we have to respect and apply or else face the consequences,” Fasika advised. He recommended the public to act like security force to keep the general public’s health.
Several countries ordered their citizens to wear face masks in public area to cut the transmission of the coronavirus.
Scientists are also advising that the face mask whether it is professional or not will significantly reduce the transmission of the virus.
Currently most of the textile industries are shifting to the production of face masks and several homemade masks are also available in the market.
The government has also recommended the public shall use any fabrics to cover the mouth and nose areas.
People are still defying authorities’ orders
ACCELERATING DEMISE
Our hyper complex global existence is facing formidable challenges. These protracted problems might not find their resolutions within the existing world system. Wallerstein’s bifurcation (ascending multi-polarity) is inevitable. To recall; the current world system has been around for over half a millennium. One can take the settlement of the Europeans in the Americas as the beginning of the prevailing world system. The world system analysis, which was developed by Samir Amin (1931-2018), Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019), Andre Gunder Frank (1929-2005) and Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009), asserted that before West European’s incursion into the Americas, the then world system was centered more to the East, around the Arab-Indo-Chinese civilization. Long ago, world system analysis predicted the rise of the East/Eurasia (again read multi-polarity), which was later outlined by Gunder in his last book–‘Reorient’ (1998)!
The current system, which is called the modern world system, (by the above world system analysts) has managed to incorporate all of humanity under its overarching logic of brutal accumulation. The system leveraged gross inequalities, such as slavery, colonialism, ethnic-ism and sexism within the human family to advance its objective. The political organization of the interstate system facilitated groupings that were leveraged for widespread/worldwide accumulation. The proliferation of supra states institutions, still anchored on the nation-states configuration, are now the seats of real power, economic, social, cultural, military, etc. (UN, NATO, EU, WTO, etc.) The ever-expanding technosphere solidified and entrenched the hierarchical world system across the planet. In late modernity, the system, utilizing its supra state institutions and technology has managed to subdue all of humanity’s aspirations under its archaic straight jacket ideology. The cumulative result: a highly complex global system, which was not and is not keen on furthering the welfare of the global sheeple (human mass) or the planet’s ecosystem. Every aspect of collective human existence is now (directly or indirectly) dictated by the old senile system of blind accumulation. This ambition of accumulation at any cost, even at the price of all life/ecosystem, cannot be sustained within the organic human universe, without massive coercion of barbaric proportion!
Consequences of the modern world system are now surfacing all over the planet. Climate change, resource depletion, economic and social inequality leading to increased global disharmony, man-made pestilences, or WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in general, etc., etc. are the most obvious signs of decay. To reiterate: the underlying unsustainable economic order is the main culprit behind the calamities we are currently witnessing. To add insult to injury, this global system is being led by the worst elements/psychopaths of the human collective. In short, global rule is a bona fide kakistocracy. Kakistocracy is a system of government that is run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens. One of the system’s economic gurus described the existing order as follows. ‘Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.’ John Maynard Keynes.
Parasitic structures to benefit only the 1%, at the expense of the 99%, have been in place for quite a while. Everything under the sky has been employed to hide as well as maintain this lopsided global order. Many institutions are created, formally & informally, to this end. The very existence of the ‘deep state’, which operates outside the jurisdiction of democracy and electoral governance, is a case in point. Today, the ‘deep state’ is very effective in secretly executing extreme measures that illude the sheeple’s blurring eyes, severely numbed taste and soft head/heart! In addition, the reigning hegemon continues to exhibit behaviors that holler; ‘the time is nigh’! There are further evidences that clearly show the system is on its final leg. In this times of protracted challenges, what might be surprising, particularly to the left, is the order’s determined move away from its continual project of pacifying the global sheeple. It seems the bosses of the system have decided to boldly move towards feudalism, neo-feudalism to be more precise. The current decision by the US to allow the FED (Federal Reserve Board) to literally buy/own everything under the sun is a new chapter in the brave new world of late modernity! This private institution, which serves as the US central bank, is owned by other western banks. The FED’s new mandate includes, besides its old prerogatives, the followings. To buy government bills/bonds outright, (monetizing debt), to buy/own commercial bonds/papers, including the useless junk bonds, to set up an extensive dollar swap arrangements with all central banks of the world. The FED can also buy shares of companies in the equity market, even though there has always been a law against this. No sweat, the FED and accomplices have come up with proxies to do this, ‘legally’! Here is what world’s largest asset manager said about the new situation. ‘Investing is dead. We can now buy whatever the central banks are buying.’ Blackrock’s Rick Rieder. ‘Fed has carved central planning into the bedrock of the US financial system, and moral hazard is not just universally accepted but a widely expected component of the investing process (or what’s left of it), it probably also means that conflicts of interest are also a thing of the past.’ Rabobank. This is the perfect heist, a stealth steal!
Thanks to Covid-19, what we now have is a situation where the 1% class of banksters are allowed to own all the significant ‘means of production’, free of charge, while the 99% are to toil for pittance that can hardly sustain life. This scheme of disfranchising people will be hastened by the massive introduction of robotics, automation, etc. Don’t forget, as it stands, institutionalized democracy (electoral democracy) is not capable of challenging the basic tenets of the existing economic order, since organized politics is under the diktat of the reigning global kakistocracy. It is the unelected dictatorship of money, led by its human psychopaths that wield all power, economic, political, social, etc.! “We have achieved the Orwellian prediction – enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them. ” Gerry Spence, From Freedom to Slavery. Good Day!
Ethiopia buys life insurance for health workers
Healthcare professionals that are in the forefront of the fight against COVID-19 will be provided with life insurance by Ethiopian Insurance Corporation.
The government has reached an agreement with the Ethiopian Insurance Corporation to buy life insurance for health professionals that are in direct contact with Covid-19 patients.
“The insurance company disclosed the agreement by their own initiative,” said Lia Tadesse Minister of Health. According to the Minister, the life insurance grant is aimed at encouraging health experts who are the most vulnerable to the deadly corona virus.
Certain works are in the making to disclose the value of the cover including registering health workers all over the country that are directly in contact with the Covid 19 cases.
According to Lia, the insurance grant will also include members of the Rapid Response Team. “At a time of emergency the team may got accidents, and the insurance grant include to provide this insurance,” Lia added.
The two sides are expected to sign an agreement in few days to make the insurance grant legal.
As Covid-19 cases continue to rise in Ethiopia, several doctors, nurses and other health workers in emergency rooms remain at high risk. The ministry has said that the government is working to provide incentive package for health workers.
“There are two selected hospitals fully accommodated with materials to give treatment for health workers,” Lia said.
The Ministry of Health is also preparing temporary residential houses for health workers.
“Health workers are at the front line of the COVID-19 outbreak response and as such are exposed to hazards that put them at risk of infection. Hazards include pathogen exposure, long working hours, psychological distress, fatigue, occupational burnout, stigma, and physical and psychological violence,” says the World Health Organization (WHO).
The organization has a guideline set of rights of health workers, including the specific measures needed to protect occupational safety and health, Necessary preventive and protective measures should be taken to minimize risks.
Such rights include, provide adequate personal protective equipment, IPC and PPE supplies including masks, gloves, goggles, gowns, hand sanitizer, soap and water, cleaning supplies in sufficient quantity to those caring for suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients, such that workers do not incur expenses for occupational safety.
The pandemic virus Covid-19 is surprising the world with its high spread. The increasing number of confirmed cases from day to day is running high and it is taking lives of hundreds of thousands each day.
Due to the spread of virus in the world medical workers are more strained than ever.
Hence the country has lack of sufficient health professionals the government called on retired and intern health workers to register and join the national movement to mitigate the spread of the virus. According to Lia, more than 16,000 health workers has already registered so far and 693 has been employed by the federal government and more than 3000 by regional governments.
IMF projects a recession for sub-Saharan Africa in 2020
The effect of global outbreak of COVID 19 will contract Ethiopia’s real GDP growth to 3.2 percent in 2020 the IMF Regional Economic Outlook predicts.
The country that in the past 15 years registered higher economic growth particularly in the involvement of public projects, is expected to be highly affected by the coronavirus pandemic that also put the sub Saharan Africa region on serious economic challenge.
The IMF Regional Economic Outlook published in October 2019 forecasted that the country’s real GDP growth will stand at 7.2 percent in 2020.
However as many other countries in the region because of the effect of the virus the economic growth will sharply decline by over half than the previous projection.
In the latest outlook published in relation with the joint spring meeting of the World Bank and IMF with member countries the real GDP growth of Ethiopia will be limited to 3.2 percent for the year.
Even though the growth rate projection for the year is lesser than the previous forecast it is still one of the biggest growth in the subcontinent.
According to the IMF projection in the sub continent the biggest economic growth will be registered by South Sudan, Benin, Uganda and Rwanda.
The latest outlook indicated that the stated countries real GDP growth will stand at 4.9 percent, 4.5 percent, 3.5 percent and 3.5 percent respectively and Ethiopia and Senegal will follow by 3.2 and 3 percentages respectively.
The sub continent regional outlook projection indicated that Ethiopia’s real GDP growth for the year 2021 will be at 4.3 percent that mean it will show slight improvement but it is very far compared with the previous growth path.
IMF Regional Economic Outlook published in October 2019 forecasted that Ethiopia’s government debt in 2020 will be 54.4 percent of the GDP from 59.1 percent in 2019. Meanwhile the latest projection increased the debt share of the GDP to 56.9 percent for 2020 and that will also reach 57.6 percent in 2021.
The overall fiscal balance including grants for the year 2020 will stand at -3 (negative three) percent.
The latest report added that Ethiopia’s external debt will jump to 29.9 percent in 2020 that was expected to stand at 28 percent of the GDP in the previous IMF projection.
In its recommendation IMF advise countries that fiscal, monetary, and financial policies should be used to protect vulnerable groups, mitigate economic losses, and support the recovery.
“Once the crisis subsides, fiscal positions should return to sustainable paths,” it said.
Ethiopia is allocating huge amount of resource to fight the spread of the virus besides the private sector, which is highly affected by the situation, which is putting its effort to mitigate the virus effect.
So far employers are ordered not to lay off their employees and real estate owners are also cutting office and shop rental fees that will have direct effect on the tax collection.
IMF stated that the real GDP in sub-Saharan Africa in general is projected to contract by −1.6 percent in 2020, the lowest level of growth on record. This is about 5.2 percentage points lower than envisaged in the October 2019 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa.
The sharp downward revision largely reflects the fallout from the spread of COVID-19 and lower-than-expected commodity prices. In addition, idiosyncratic factors, such as continued structural constraints (South Africa), policy adjustment (Ethiopia), and climate and other natural shocks (such as the locust invasion in eastern Africa) have also contributed to the downward revisions.
