“A Public and Official Quarantine is Badly Missing in Nicaragua,” says Bishop

The call for a public quarantine to face the health crisis caused by the new Coronavirus is badly missing, states the bishop of Matagalpa.

By Keying T. Romero (Confidencial)

HAVANA TIMES – Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, bishop of Matagalpa, a city in north-central Nicaragua, was visibly concerned about the lack of state programs and subsidies that would allow Nicaraguan companies to send their workers home as a preventive measure against the spread of the pandemic in the country.

“We badly need a public subsidy, some tax exemption programs for companies, so that the workers could support themselves and be justly supported with their salaries. We badly need a public and official quarantine so that the essential, fundamental and basic areas can continue, and the country could sustain itself,” stated the religious leader during his sermon this past Sunday.

In the same way, he lamented the fact that a large part of the population can’t continue with social distancing measures because they don’t have formal employment.

“Nicaragua was already immersed in a social, political and economic crisis, and today it has been joined by a new crisis: that of the pandemic. The health crisis that has obligated us to leave normality even further behind, a normality that was only in appearance,” said the bishop.

According to the projections for our country, with the arrival of Covid-19, the economic drop this year will be worse than that of 2018, when the civic protests began. The fall in the gross national product will be even greater than the six percent that the International Monetary Fund calculated.

“True, nothing is normal. It’s been lost, and we’re weighed down by the lack of normality that we’ve been bearing for so long. But above all, the most painful thing are the lives lost in the world, in Nicaragua. (…) For us, the Nicaraguans, the solution must be comprehensive, with a holistic vision of the country, that right now stems from the search for health solutions, but also social economic and political ones,” said Alvarez.