COVID-19 Lockdown: Lagos Considers Full Reopening Of Economy, Worship Centres

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has said Lagos State Government is considering full reopening of its economy and worship centres.

“But, the move will not be pushed in a hurry,” he said at a briefing after the State’s Security Council meeting held at the State House in Marina on Sunday.”

A statement from the government quoted Sanwo-Olu as saying officials from the Lagos State Safety Commission and Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency would visit restaurants, companies, religious houses to assess their level of readiness.

“We are reviewing and considering how the phased unlocking will happen. If we see a huge level of compliance, then it can happen in the next two to three weeks. If not, it could take a month or two months. It is until we are sure all of these players are ready to conform to our guidelines,” the Governor added.

With the size of the state’s economy and numbers of businesses that operate in its domain, the governor said Lagos could not afford to keep people and businesses on lockdown permanently.

He said, “We are at a level where we are reviewing the other arms of the economy. In the coming days, we will be starting what we call Register-to-Open, which means all players in the restaurant business, event centres, entertainment, malls, and cinemas will go through a form of re-registration and space management.

“There is a regulation that will be introduced to supervise this move. We will be coming to their facilities to assess their level of readiness for a future opening. I don’t know when that opening will happen in the weeks ahead, but we want these businesses to begin to tune themselves to the reality of COVID-19 with respect to how their workspaces need to look like.

“For us, it is not to say they should re-open fully tomorrow or any time; there has to be a process guiding the re-opening. We will be mandating LASEPA and Safety Commission to begin the enumeration process and the agencies will be communicating with all relevant businesses and houses in the days ahead. I must, however, caution that this should not be misinterpreted as a licence for full opening; it is certainly not. The State’s economy is not ready for that now.”

(PUNCH)