Photo credit: Reuters
With COVID 19, it has become apparent that even though we live in the same world, there are different strokes for different folks.
I’m saying so because while the affluent do care about their lives, the poor, even if they do care, are forced by their endemic situation to go look for means of sustaining themselves.
Of course, the men of means have too much money, even for their own comfort.
It’s so sad that both classes have been put in the same situation. Unfortunately, we could even divide the reactions according to the stages of development of societies.
The developed world has been trying to seek a solution to the pandemic. Nations there have been really taking care of their citizens.
That’s because the governments have all it takes to care for their people.
However, most underdeveloped nations hardly have the wherewithal to care for their own nationals.
In a situation where a government can’t even pay the salaries of its own employees, where there’s a gross mismanagement of resources, where we have a lot of wastage of farm products, certainly all can not be well.
It is therefore not a surprise when it has been so difficult for people to adhere to the lockdown policy in the underdeveloped countries.
If they adhere to it, who’ll feed them?
The ad hoc policy of government to feed a minor percentage of the population has not been successful due to kleptocracy at the highest levels.
I would have thought it better for government to let supermarkets or market people distribute the relief materials with a little profit accruing to the distributors. Government would then put some money in the bank accounts of people so that they could purchase the items.
That would have brought about a regime of accountability and succeeded in maintaining a form of social distance.
Why is it that it’s when it’s the turn of Africa that the bean cake becomes a bone?
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