The WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic and Ghana, by law, quickly responsibly declared it a public health emergency.

The virus is threatening the global population, fast depleting it and ravaging economies.

Covid-19 got the State to suspend our constitutional and fundamental human rights with lock-downs and privacy-invading laws.

Covid-19 has forced laws that have seen people losing their jobs and livelihoods. Health professionals and workers have taken risks that even kill them.

Shops have been shut for breaching the safety protocols. People, especially poor hawkers have been rounded up in their hundreds to face the criminal penalty of GHC 12 – 60,000 and/or 4-10 years in prison.

Our MPs thought this was the way to protect people from Covid-19. We made laws requiring mandatory quarantine for those who test positive.

Mr. Speaker, the irresponsible MPs are a danger to themselves and all of us.

They do not have any right deserving of protection. Stop cautioning and threatening to disclose their identities if they continue to attend Parliament knowing they carry the virus.

The same Constitution that gives the right to privacy, takes that right away from an individual for the common good and for public health.

By the way, the law you made for the poor is not working. It is stretching and endangering the police and the hundreds they arrest only at the command of a President.

Clearly, they step out only to avoid a President’s unjust anger. They step out only a day and they arrest hundreds. They will need busses to convey them, stadiums of police cells to hold and process them for stadiums of court premises and prisons. What an easy way to spread Covid-19?

This is why the police have rather taken to mounting campaigns to create awareness and educate people about the virus and about the need to observe the preventative protocols including wearing the mask. There truly are very many who genuinely cannot afford a mask and may not be encouraged to use their handkerchiefs or a cloth to serve the protective purpose.

On the few occasions they stepped out, over the period, they, at the last count, have arrested a total of 1,326 persons. They have successfully secured convictions for 175 while others were acquitted and discharged.

But the police exercised the best discretion freeing 961 by giving 484 verbal cautions and issuing written cautions to 477 to go and sin no more.
You paid GHC 20.00 spot fine and handed a mask to wear in Ho.

The Assembly passed this wise, humane, and easy to enforce by-law when the State delayed in making a law to compel wearing a mask. They just reactivated it.

Spot fines breed corruption among enforcers but, certainly, the corruption won’t be as much as the grand heartless rape of the public purse by godless politicians.

Elsewhere in India, municipalities charge about $3.00 and hand violators a mask. This has not only increased compliance and protection but mobilized substantial funds for local authorities to increase their fight against Covid-19.

What we are doing isn’t working as it is impractical and wicked. You breached the law with impunity for votes. Stop threatening stiffer sanctions.

The police are not amused. Our laws allow local authorities to make by-laws for such situations.

That’s your legal light.

Samson Lardy ANYENINI
February 6, 2021 – Issue #4