The Executive Governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has disclosed that officials of the government will be visiting churches, mosques and companies in a bid to evaluate their preparedness for fully reopening.
According to the Governor, social distancing and hygiene will be the major prerequisites as far as reopening religious places of worship is concerned in the state.
Sanwo-Olu disclosed these at a briefing that took place after the State Security Council meeting at the Lagos House on Sunday.
He stressed further that with the state economy’s size and numbers of businesses operating in the state, the government could not afford to lockdown people and businesses permanently.
The governor said officials from the Lagos State Safety Commission and Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency would start assessing the readiness of the players in identified sectors for supervised operations in few days
He said, “We are at a level where we are reviewing the other arms of the economy. In the coming days, we will be starting what we call Register-to-Open, which means all players in the restaurant business, event centres, entertainment, malls and cinemas, will go through a form of re-registration and space management.
“There is a regulation that will be introduced to supervise this move. We will be coming to their facilities to assess their level of readiness for a future opening. I don’t know when that opening will happen in the weeks ahead, but we want these businesses to begin to tune themselves to the reality of COVID-19 with respect to how their work spaces need to look like.
“For us, it is not to say they should re-open fully tomorrow or any time; there has been a process guiding the re-opening.
“We will be mandating LASEPA and safety commission to begin the enumeration process and the agencies will be communicating with all relevant businesses and houses in the days ahead. I must, however, caution that this should not be misinterpreted as a licence for full opening; it is certainly not. The state’s economy is not ready for that now.”
Also, Sanwo-Olu said the agencies of government would be visiting places of worship prior to full reopening.
He said that social distancing and hygiene would be taken into full consideration to determine whether mosques and churches could re-open.
He said: “We are reviewing and considering how the phased unlocking will happen. If we see huge level of compliance, then it can happen in the next two to three weeks. If not, it could take a month or two months. It is until we are sure all these players are ready to conform to our guidelines.”
