By Bakary Touray Jr.
The National Assembly Member (NAM) for Basse Constituency, Hon. Muhammed Magassy, has underlined that tangible information is needed for the country’s lawmakers to make informed decisions on the prevention of COVID-19 Pandemic in the country.
As the Basse Parliamentary Representative argued, making informed decisions on the pandemic would require adequate information to avert making wrong decisions, and he cautioned that the latter would affect the entire nation in the efforts to fight against COVID-19.
Hon. Magassy, who was speaking at the Legislative House in Banjul during their recent debate, stressed the need to revisit the restriction on the number of public gathering to 5 people for any ceremony.
He also expressed concerns with the recommendation that the Finance Ministry and the relevant line Ministries should work with the Justice Ministry, during the restriction period, to come up with a compensatory mechanism to the most vulnerable people during the period.
The Basse NAM’s view: “This is an important recommendation, but [it]needs to be clarified before any action is taken. This will help us make essential informed decisions on issues that we have adequate information and clarification on those issues.”
He held that, “by now we should get the assessment of the one week declaration, on what were the social, economic and the academic impacts. All the Ministers should help us with the impact assessment of this declaration on their various Ministries”. Magassy believes that would help them to know whether to continue with the restriction period or not.
“But as at now, we are working in ambiguity and as Parliamentarians, we need to be very careful because we are representing our people and we make the decisions on their behalf,” the lawmaker opined during the debate. He reiterated that those ambiguities should be clarified first and then they would have the ground to make a decision that would suit the entire nation.
Magassy had also shared his views on commercial businesses, stating they should not be totally banned during the period, but rather the regulation should be to restrict their opening and closing time, as he pointed out that “all commodities are essential”.
Hear the Basse people’s Representative, again: “Any commodity you need is essential to you, and what you refer to as non-essential commodity is the source of gains for another person to get the essential commodity. So, if that is totally banned, is going to create another problem.”
Hon. Magassy pointed out to his colleagues that information is central in the fight against the pandemic, and he therefore suggested that, all the channels of information and national languages be used to enable the people have clearer understanding on the State of Public Emergency by the Government.
