COMMENT | Little time for businesses to prepare for opening up of economy

COMMENT | Considering that the evidence is of a spike in cases when lockdowns are relaxed, the government should have been much more careful about lifting restrictions under the movement control order (MCO).

This is especially so since evidence indicates that when restrictions are removed even in very disciplined societies such as South Korea and Japan, infection cases increased. In some instances, this has required lockdowns to be effectively reimposed.

If we learnt from these lessons, it is imperative that we first check carefully whether we are prepared to lift the lockdown and that all conditions are in place to do so and still keep the pandemic reasonably under control.

One must remember that the effects of relaxing movement now will be known only two weeks later at least because that is how long before the disease manifests itself, and probably a week or two after that for the full impact to materialise.

So it will be much more prudent to give enough time for all sectors of the economy to adapt to the new normal and ensure that they are fully able to meet all conditions and standard operating procedures (SOPs) before lifting the restriction under the misnomer “conditional MCO”.

Yes, it is conditional, but it is physically impossible to ensure everyone complies. You need to give businesses more time to prepare for this, especially the smaller businesses – the small and medium enterprises or SMEs which employ about 70% of workers.

This is where infection is most likely – the most number of people are there and the ones most likely to ignore SOPs. They include all sorts of businesses – food and beverage, services, shops, workplaces – virtually all can reopen except...