REVIEW HIGH-RISK BUSINESS CLASSIFICATION

Sir,

On Friday, March 27, 2020 Eswatini was placed on partial lockdown to help fight the spread of COVID-19. Guidelines issued by government prior to the lockdown were to the effect that a circulated list of 15 businesses, classified as essential, could operate normally while other businesses shall operate provided  they could minimise their working hours and enforce WHO and Ministry of Health COVID-19 prevention guidelines.

Public transport operations were limited to a few hours in the morning and afternoon. All businesses and members of the public were also instructed to practise social distancing. The police and army were then roped in to help enforce these lockdown rules.

Changed

Unfortunately, the security forces personnel immediately changed the lockdown rules by forcibly shutting down all the ‘other businesses’ which had been allowed to operate, albeit with minimised working hours. Without any authoritative voice being raised against these forced business closures, what was meant to be a partial lockdown was transformed into a full lockdown, practically bringing the economy to a standstill.

On Thursday, April 16, 2020 a 21-day extension of the lockdown was announced with a relaxation of some of the rules along with a reclassification of businesses into essential, low-risk and high-risk. This reclassification allows essential and low-risk businesses to operate while those classified as high-risk businesses are to be closed. Included in the list of high-risk businesses are hairdressing salons, barbershops, manufacturing, distribution and wholesaling of liquor and clothing street vendors also known as bend and pick.

Closure

The reclassification of some businesses as high-risk and their closure raises a number of questions: How did businesses which could operate during the first lockdown mutate to high-risk businesses on extension of the lockdown? How much riskier is the operation of a salon than a kombi in spreading the coronavirus? For all intents and purposes, increasing public transport carrying capacity to 70 per cent negates the probable use of social distancing as a justification for classifying salons etc as higher risk businesses than public transportation.

It is true that a hairdresser works in close proximity to her customer. However, her main direct contact with the customer is the customer’s hair. There is little or no physical contact elsewhere between her and the customer. She can, therefore, protect herself and the customer by wearing a mask, hand gloves and an apron. Chances of the hairdresser infecting the customer by breathing directly on her are limited because she works in a ventilated environment and mostly behind and on the sides of the customer.

Safety is enhanced further if the customer also wears a mask. In consideration of the aforementioned points, I wonder how our public transportation system gets to be classified as a low-risk business than a hairdressing salon or barbershop. Including breweries which operate under strict professional and internationally accepted hygienic and safety regulations in the high-risk business category defies logic.

In the absence of easily accessible government-sponsored financial relief packages on which they can fall, a continued closure of these businesses will cause financial hardships for staff and proprietors.  On the ethical front, it is just not fair to these businesses that they are forced to stop operations and their sources of income plugged when no financial and other forms of reliefs are provided to keep them afloat until the lockdown is lifted. It is understandable that Eswatini’s economy is not financially healthy enough to allow implementation of similar reliefs.

Therefore, the power to shut down businesses during the lockdown should be exercised with caution to avoid a situation where our economy is crippled and more people are killed by hunger and stress than the virus we are trying to contain and manage.

Bonyeyaw.
Mbabane

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