BY IDRISS ALI NASSAH
The government of Malawi is learning that if you sleep on the wheel, others will get in the seat and drive the bus. The response to Covid-19 has been slow, lethargic and, in parts, uncoordinated. Yet this pandemic is a real and present security, economic, health and public order risk.
What government must do now is to urgently active and roll out its huge machinery–including the impressive human and material resources sitting with the Malawi Defence Force, in order to confront the crisis we are facing.
I have been to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital’s Covid response unit and what I saw inside those UN-donated tents was disorientating. How we can be caught so woefully unprepared is unforgivable.
For the government to still not rise to the occasion is criminal. For taxpayers and other citizens to donate their money to buy flow meters is heart-warming but, frankly, it shouldn’t be the norm. We owe it to the people of Malawi to do better by them. That is what leadership is.
