Coronavirus: Poverty tastes bitter than diseases – Dr Obeng

President of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), Dr Joseph Obeng, has professed that having a poverty-stricken country is worse than a pandemic that the country is faced with.

Dr Obeng predicted that should government focus only on finding a cure for diseases, specifically the coronavirus, without factoring in the abilities of Ghanaians, then the situation will worsen.

According to him, "Africa has tasted a lot of diseases and Africa has also tasted poverty and we know that poverty is more bitter so if you are managing this sickness and you relegate poverty to the background, that’s why this kind of demurrage waivers and all that are very important. Otherwise, if the situation becomes worse, and you say that someone should go on a lockdown, he’ll remind you that the other time I incurred losses or cost because my demurrage was piled up and I didn’t have anybody and the person would be reluctant to go.”

He cautioned African leaders to not relegate poverty to the background but “should fuse the two together and not concentrate only on the disease otherwise they will fail woefully.”

He explained that Ghanaians have been able to survive diseases such as Cholera and Ebola, and are still living. Thus he believes there’s the need for one to focus on working hard to work, get money and feed families.

“We should fuse the two and not concentrate only on the disease otherwise we are bound to fail,” he reiterated.

Meanwhile, Ghana’s coronavirus case count has jumped to 2,719 with 294 recoveries and 18 people dead.

Ghana Health Service is still embarking on a massive testing and contact tracing exercise to ensure affected persons are identified as part of measures to further curb the spread of the virus.