COVID-19 SERIES : PEOPLE, BUSINESSES AND UNEMPLOYMENT (Banks, Menzgold etc)

A good government puts the interest of the people first not the economy. A sound economy without people to run it becomes a ghost economy and is not sustainable in the long term. So whiles we think about how we are able to bring the economy back to life and not dead people, let us also think of preventing people from dying in the first place because the government has truthfully conceded it's inability to bring dead people back to life. Unfortunately if adequate measures are not put in place the cases could increase and more people will die. Ghana as of today has a staggering case of 313 cases a jump from 287 cases from the last update. A breakdown of these cases are as follows :

Greater Accra Region 274 cases
Ashanti Region 25 cases
Upper East Region 1 case
Northern Region 10 cases
Upper West Region 1 case
Central Region 1 case

6 deaths has been reported so far, 3 recoveries and 31 discharges. 37 people are reporting well to treatment, 74 responding to treatment. A total of 11,016 enhanced contract tracing and testing have yielded 37 testing negative. This group represents the group who have had contacts with the affected persons. 1,030 travellers who were quarantined had 79 of them testing positive. 26 cases were later converted to positive out of the 951 remaining at the exit screening.

The Finance Minister is currently seeking a further approval of Ghs1.2 billion from parliament from the Stabilization fund to help fight this virus in line with some of the provisions made by the president in his recent address to the nation.

No one is against government decisions and interventions in this Covid-19. If for anything at all we have applauded government on several occasions but we think more can be done to save lives of people and businesses in Ghana. Government needs to intervene in sustaining businesses in areas it has locked down to keep people in active employment and business running after this Covid-19 pandemic is all over. With these 3 months provisions being made for certain services in the country and the president himself donating 3 months of his salary to this fight and his Ministers too donating 50% of their salaries for 3 months to this fight, certainly the writing is on the wall that we are not returning to our normal lives anytime soon.

 What becomes of the various running or overhead costs of businesses especially salaries of employees, utilities, interest on loans and taxes? In places like France and USA, the government is making an attempt to sustain businesses not to create massive unemployment although that is inevitable. Job losses in America during this Covid-19 has reached 6.6 million people currently unemployed. British Airways has sacked 30,000 of it's workers. In Ghana hotel Kempenski is laying off 85% of it's working staff and are shutting down 4 floors not to operate hotel services. Nowadays, many companies only employ contract staff especially banks. You can expect very huge unemployment in the banking sector during this Covid-19 pandemic in Ghana. Any sector of the economy where there are mostly contract staff there will be job losses.

After the banking sector reformation where people lost their jobs, some committed suicide, some are still at home unemployed looking for jobs, now this Covid-19 is further coming to cripple businesses that those who had hope of entry into the job market have their hopes dashed and those who maintained stable and secure jobs are now going to loose their jobs to further compound the rate of unemployment in the country. What about the various depositors of the closed microfinance companies, savings and loans companies and banks? What about customers of Menzgold? No one is talking about these people now. Should some of them be affected by Covid-19, they die without seeing their deposits or investments again.

We urge government to do more so save businesses, people and employment. We are pleading with government now that the focus should not be on economic figures but saving lives of people and businesses. In the midst of this fight those with deposits and investments with defunct banks, microfinance, savings and loans, Menzgold should all be looked at because they also need survival and no one knows when this pandemic will end. The economy will return back to normalcy with the right steps taken after Covid-19 as even predicted by Bill Gates but for now the priority is saving lives, businesses and unemployment. Let's truly locate the under privileged in soceity and help them. Tax waiver must not only be health workers but for businesses, traders and employees in areas of lockdown.