Ganduje signs new regulations on COVID-19 targeting fake news

– Plateau residents cry of hunger amid lockdown

Governor Abdullahi Ganduje yesterday announced the enforcement of new regulations guiding activities of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and public engagement in Kano.

By the new regulations, the governor is empowered to sanction and prosecute any person or organisation spreading fake news about the pandemic in the state.

The ‘Kano State Public Health Infectious Diseases Regulations 2020’ also enabled the governor to confiscate any food, drug and other essential commodities being hoarded or unduly inflated due to COVID-19 pandemic.

Such products, according to the regulations, will be distributed free to the poor and vulnerable people in society.

The Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Ibrahim Muktar, who presented the new regulations yesterday during a stakeholders’ meeting at Government House, noted that they were is pursuant to Kano state Public Health Law 1991.

As lockdown continues Plateau State, residents have lamented that the pangs of hunger seem to be more severe than that of COVID-19.

While marketers of clothes, bag and other items banned from sales were seen outside their locked shops soliciting for buyers, sellers of food and other consumables lament poor sales.

Governor Simon Lalong had announced last Wednesday that government constituted a committee headed by the Deputy Governor, Prof. Sonni Tyoden, to commence the distribution of palliatives to the most vulnerable and weak in the state.

He further said that already, about 61,616 beneficiaries of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) under the N-Power, Poorest of the Poor and School Feeding Programme had been receiving their stipends based on President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive.