Bangladesh National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has asked authorities concerned to act responsibly and humanely during the coronavirus crisis period.
The commission requested everyone to stay back at home, maintain social distance, follow health guidelines and act responsibly as there are no other alternatives to contain the spread of coronavirus infection.
The requests were made through a press release, signed by Public Relations Officer Farhana Syed, on Sunday.
The coronavirus is now a global pandemic and people all over the world needs to act responsibly to fight this disaster, said the release.
The NHRC has noticed the government took many initiatives to make people follow health guidelines and maintain social distance, it even announced a general holiday starting from March 26 to April 4.
However, the working people did not maintain the social distance and left Dhaka in crowds as soon as the holiday was announced, which increased the risk of coronavirus transmission.
Later considering the overall situation, the government extended the holiday till April 11, so that people stay back at home and the spread of coronavirus is contained.
However, the garment authorities did not provide any clear instruction following this holiday announcement, for which a huge number of garments workers were seen coming back to Dhaka on Saturday without maintaining any kind of social distance, release added.
Despite clear orders from the government and with law enforcement agencies also working to implement the orders, the emergence of such a situation is not desirable. The working population risked their own and others’ lives on the coronavirus infection.
As a result, the anticipated results of the general holiday announced by the government might not be achieved. Therefore the commission requested the garment owners to take appropriate action to address the health risk of the workers and employees who came to join work.
The release also asked everyone to remain protected, support each other from distance and help family, society and nation to fight against the coronavirus outbreak.
As of Sunday, Bangladesh has so far recorded nine deaths and 88 cases from Covid-19, a pandemic announced by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The fast spreading coronavirus, which was first reported in China's Wuhan, has claimed 65,600 lives and infected 1,212,900 people across the world till 9:45am on Sunday, according to Worldometers.
As many as 251,822 people have recovered from Covid-19, a disease caused by a new strain of coronavirus, which has spread to 207 countries and territories across the planet.
