The president of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa) Kgosi Larmeck Mokoena says they are concerned about the illegal crossing of people from other countries coming to South Africa.
He was reacting to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement on Wednesday that the country will move to Alert Level 1 from Monday.
Ramaphosa said a number of countries had passed the peak of the disease and had tried to bring the virus under control. He said the closing of borders was one of the main things South African government did to try and contain the spread of the virus. The President warned that the people need to guard against a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ramaphosa announces eased lockdown regulations:
Kgosi Larmeck Mokoena says South African borders are porous and government needs to look at ways to close the gap to ensure that those coming through the borders are not infected.
“While we appreciate this move we are just worried by relaxing travellers in and out of this country i.e. relaxing our borders. The challenge is to manage the influx as we said our borders are porous. We are urging government to assure South Africa that this time they will have mechanism to manage and control the influx of people in and out of our country. One other thing the condition for people to only come when they have got negative testing results, I wonder how this time they are going to manage it,” says Mokoena.
Mokoena also urged government to avail testing centres and equipment to people in the rural areas. He says people in rural areas are mostly unemployed and cannot afford expensive medical testing.
“The other challenge is the lack of testing equipment. Many of our people are unemployed to access this facilities, testing at private entities is very expensive this will discourage our people to go and test simply because they can’t afford to pay this exorbitant amount. I call upon our government to expedited buying of this testing equipment. The majority of our people are unemployed they can’t afford,” says Mokoena.
Mokoena also urged traditional leaders to ensure that people adhere to the COVID-19 regulations so that the country does not revert back to Level 5.
Lockdown Level 1 | Xhanti Payi on it means for the economy:
