Even though the Minister of Health Dr. Wilhelmina Jallah has constantly called on the general public to ensure that preventive health measures are observed to avoid the furthered spread of COVID-19, but members of the 54th legislature and other top officials of the government are caught in the habit of breaking said rules.
During the height of the outbreak in Liberia and even now, the lawmakers and top officials in government have consistently gathered huge crowds with total disregard to the COVID-19 health protocols.
At these gatherings, hundreds of people are seeing at different venues many of them not wearing masks and observing social distancing.
Children who are also in attendance at these mass gatherings are often subjected to sitting on the bare floor due to a lack of enough seats at these congested venues.
It was another scene of attraction over the weekend in Gbarnga, Bong County where Representative Josiah Marvin Cole had gone to present a dozen of copybooks and cash to school-going kids.
The meeting was well-attended and the Bong County District #3 representative distributed a dozen of copy books and a sum of L$5000.00 to five hundred beneficiaries of the Jewel M. Cole Foundation.
The majority of the attendees in the hall were without nose masks and the social distancing rule was not even observed.
Rep. Cole, his ten-year-old daughter along with almost everyone on the platform were without nose masks except for an individual as depicted in the photograph below.
Ignoring the COVID-19 preventive health measures has become habitual for members of the 54th legislature.
Recently, during the elections of the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, the lawmakers were without a mask, shaking hands and hugging while there was no social distancing observed.
That is not just all, during their regular sitting up Capitol Hill, these lawmakers even including the Speaker and Deputy Speaker are seeing on live videos without face masks.
It may be recalled Dr. Wilhelmina Jallah asserted that is difficult for Africans including Liberians to practice the wearing of masks and follow the health measures appropriately.
She also warned Liberians to abide by the social distancing health protocol and make the wearing of masks a compulsory mandate
Dr. Jallah said, “This will help reduce the mode of transmission across the country.”
At the regular news conference held in Monrovia on Monday, April 20, 2020, Dr. Jallah called on all Liberians to always wear masks to save each other and the country at large.
