PSOJ welcomes shift in COVID curfew

Edmond Campbell/Senior Parliamentary Reporter

With the scrapping of the no-movement day on Sunday by the Andrew Holness administration, President of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, Keith Duncan, said the organisation was pleased with the change and the gradual lifting of restrictions.

“Jamaica's rate of vaccination is still very low at 13.4 per cent and we have to be strategic in how we lift restrictions to ensure that we do not put back Jamaica in the place we were two months ago when we experienced the third wave,” Duncan stated in an emailed response last evening.

On Tuesday, Holness announced that the curfew hours for each day of the week would now cover the period 8 p.m. to 5 a.m.

According to the prime minister, these measures would take effect on October 29 and remain in place for three weeks.

Indicating that the measures might be renewed at the end of the period, Holness said that the Government, Opposition and other stakeholders would have dialogue on the measures to be introduced for the upcoming Christmas holidays.

“We cannot continue with this cat and mouse game of opening up and then locking down,” Holness declared during a statement in Parliament last evening.

He said the country had to learn to live with COVID-19, noting that the Government was signalling that “we are in that process of shifting how we manage the pandemic”.

The prime minister argued that Jamaicans would have to bear a greater personal responsibility in terms of protecting themselves against the virus.

With about 150,000 of the Astrazeneca vaccines set to expire by October 31, the prime minister made an impassioned plea for unvaccinated Jamaicans to get the jab and for those due a second dose to show up at one of the 247 sites and be inoculated.

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