The Eastern Highlands Province will be going into lockdown as of tomorrow the 11th of October to the 26th of October.
Eastern Highlands Governor Peter Numu and the Provincial COVID-19 Controller John Gimiseve made the announcement over the weekend following the COVID-19 surge in the province that has spread to all eight districts in the province killing many people.
Mr Gimiseve said though the lockdown will start on Monday, it will be effective as of Wednesday with all eight districts restricted from coming into Goroka town except for essential services.
“By Wednesday, there will be a total lockdown of intra provincial movement.”
“The eight districts will be kept at bay.”
“There will be roadblocks set up by police between districts so for the next two weeks, movements in and out of districts will not happen.”
“All public transport will stop by Wednesday, no travelling back and forth from the upper Highlands down to the Coast and vice versa.”
“For those that live within Goroka town should take note that few of the essential shops will open from 8am-2pm only and you can only access those shops between that time, followed by curfew after 2pm.”
“We have asked shop owners within the town area to scale down their staff to below 20 as per the national directives from the Controller.”
As for schools, the Grade Eight, Ten and Twelve students are the only students that will be allowed to attend classes as they have exams coming up while the rest of the students remain at home.
“That also creates more space in the schools and also we cannot stop these lot of students from going to school as they have exams coming up.”
Mr Gimiseve said they will be issuing exemption passes for essential services only.
“Essential services include medical evacuation for vehicles that are moving sick people around, shop owners back in the districts that need to restock their store goods and big cargo trucks that need to pass through Goroka.”
He said shop owners in the province should start applying to the Provincial Police Commander to obtain their exemption passes before Wednesday.
Cargo moving vehicles will also be issued exemption passes and their drivers will be tested at the checkpoints before they pass through Goroka.
“The drivers of the cargo vehicles are no different from the public, they will be tested at the two check points.”
“One check point will be on the Eastern End which will be down at Kassam Yonki and the other checkpoint will be at the Western End which will be at Chimbu Eastern Highlands boarder,” said Gimiseve.
As for the airlines, they will be allowed to operate with the provincial COVID-19 surveillance team to step up on testing at the airport upon arrivals.
Mr Gimiseve said they will stop flights from coming in if they do detect the virus from the passengers.
He said all the police officers in the province have been tasked to carry out surveillance and security during this lockdown therefore, minor crimes will not be entertained except for major crimes.
“All police have been deployed to do this, therefore our Goroka police station will only deal with serious matters such as, rape, armed robbery and murder, all the other cases will have to wait until situation is back to normal.”
The Police officers will all be tested for COVID-19 and only those with negative results will be allowed to be part of the lockdown surveillance team.
Mr Gimiseve said as much as possible, they don’t want to restrict people from moving around however, it is unfortunate that the virus is moving with people from one place to another.
“We want people to move around freely but unfortunately when the move, they move with the virus.”
“The virus is not something we can physically hold and deal with it separately from the human beings.”
“In order to kill the virus, we have to deal with carriers.”
He said a postmortem will be done after the two weeks lockdown to assess the situation and if there is no improvement then drastic actions will be taken.
“If it goes from bad to worse then we will just say that Eastern Highlands will be closed to the rest of the world for whatever period that would be deemed necessary,” said Mr Gimiseve.