First work day of lockdown

Different scenes played out in the capital Kampala yesterday as many dwellers started the new week in a total lockdown.

President Museveni on Friday announced nationwide lockdown for the next 42 days in a bid to check the skyrocketing coronavirus cases.
Among the directives was revising curfew to start from 7pm to 5.30am and ban on public and private transport.  

At about 6am, streams of people poured on the streets to walk to their work places.
Those under the essential category, some with the weather beaten stickers from last year’s lockdown, drove themselves to work albeit with numerous police checkpoints.
Police asked some to park as they verified their authenticity while others were given the greenlight.

A case in point was at a roadblock in Bweyogerere, a suburb in Wakiso District near Kampala, where a policeman was seen stopping a car before moving closer to inspect the old sticker plastered across its windscreen and then allowed to proceed.
 
Elsewhere, the police and military men did not, however, care whether one had an old sticker, identity card, or some other kind of documents that permitted them to drive and parked many of them for hours.
 
Among those who were inconvenienced yesterday despite being essential workers and having proper documentation was Mr Alex Munyambabazi, a medical laboratory scientist working at Makindye Military Police Barracks.
“As I was driving from my residence in Gayaza to Makindye in Kampala, I came across 10 roadblocks. At each of them, I met policemen who asked many questions. Even when I showed them my work identification card, they remained tough.

They told me that the identity card did not mean anything in the new lockdown and that I needed to apply for a special sticker,” Mr Munyambabazi said yesterday.
Regardless of the inconveniences, he managed to reach his workplace but the idea of going back home under the same stringent conditions bothered him for most of the day.  

The revival of walk to work
On the road shoulders, majority of city dwellers braved the long walk to their work places amid the ban on private and public means of transport.
Some of the pedestrians this newspaper saw and talked to were in suburbs such as Kireka, Banda, Kyambogo, Nakawa, and around the city centre.

“I stay in Banda (a suburb) in the outskirts of the city centre. I started walking from home at about 6.30am and reached town at about 9am,” Ms Josephine Kalyango said.
Ms Kalyongo owns a restaurant in downtown Kampala.
 
“It was a tiresome journey but what can you do? I have to work and fend for my two children since I am a single mother,” she added.
During the course of the day, we spoke to several businessmen and women inquiring on how their respective businesses were doing.
Many of them said “things were slow and that there were no customers”.

One particular wholesale trader in Kyambogo said he could not restock his shop because his supplier in Kikuubo was not working.
Kikuubo is one of the biggest general crowded merchandise area in downtown Kampala with traders from all parts of the country making daily visits to the business hub .  It was one of the business centres the President ordered to remain closed for 42 days.

The situation in offices
In his Friday address, President Museveni noted that although many offices had compiled with the 30 per cent physical presence at workplaces, the new directive ought to be reviewed with a further reduction to 10 per cent in non-core ministries, department and agencies (MDAs).

Some company managers told Daily Monitor that they had already heeded the directive and most of their staff were working from home.
“We definitely revised our working schedule.

 For us now, three staff commute from home, seven are residents while others work from home,” Mr Albert Louis Elwa, the director of Recovery Uganda, a non-profit organisation formed by individuals recovering from substance addiction, said.
Last week, the Prime Minister, Ms Robinah Nabbanja, said some staff at should work from home.

Ms Nabbanja appealed to managers and directors in organisations to have a skeletal team working from office while the rest work from home.

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