CHURCHES ADHERE TO GOVT’S MEASURES

MBABANE – Keeping the elderly and children at home, hand sanitising and keeping a metre distance was observed among several churches, while others staggered their services.

This follows the government ban of large gatherings; especially events of more than 50 people. In order to comply with the precautions issued by government through the Ministry of Health and World Health Organisation (WHO), several churches with a large membership had to stagger their services to stick to the specified 50 persons. Among other churches, the Mbabane Alliance Church, which has a large membership, divided their services into 14 groups. This has resulted in their services being divided into seven groups each on Saturday and Sunday due to their large membership.

In an interview with Reverend Johannes Mazibuko, the leader of the church, he said although the national emergency was delivered during the due course of last week, the church had started implementing the precautions. Mazibuko said following the announcement, they met as the church leadership to strategise on how they would properly implement the precautions as per government’s call. He said although it was seriously affecting their services, they considered to follow the precautions because it was important to protect congregants.

Accommodate

According to Mazibuko, the church will have services on Saturday and Sunday in order to accommodate all members. Reverend Mazibuko said congregants would choose days and times that they were comfortable with and services would begin from 8:30am until 5pm on both days. According to the cleric, normally, they met on Sundays where they divided into two groups for the English and siSwati services, breaking off at 1pm. Mazibuko said due to the new arrangement, they had reduced their services to a minimum of one hour. “We had no idea on how we would be able to achieve this but it has to happen,” said the reverend.

Meanwhile, he said the church started last week to follow the precautions where they held talks creating awareness regarding the COVID-19 pandemic where they engaged health workers.

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