Govt. as drunk as a skunk?

Tuesday 21st September, 2021

Drinking is one of the many things Sri Lankans do not know how to do properly. They do not drink tea with sugar; instead, they drink sugar with tea, as it were, and religiously keep their blood sugar levels extremely high much to the benefit of Big Pharma. They are supposed to drink a lot of clean water daily, but they take in only a little of it, and ask for kidney problems. They prefer sugary drinks saturated with kidney-busting dyes and high levels of sugar to healthy, tasty thambili or kurumba.

Sri Lankan males are the worst; they chugalug firewater as if they had a death wish, and most of them do so at the expense of their families. ‘Moderation’ is certainly not in their vocabulary. A person cannot be denied his right to drink himself to death, but something needs to be done when drunkards become a threat to others’ health by spreading deadly diseases.

When the government, in its wisdom, allowed liquor outlets to reopen, ‘Alpha males’ amongst us thronged around them, without giving a tinker’s cuss about the highly contagious Delta variant of coronavirus. Having jostled and shoved madly, they must have returned home, taking with them not only alcohol but also the deadly coronavirus, which is looking for lives to snuff out; they have endangered the lives of their family members. Thus, in a single day, the country must have lost most of what it had gained through the past few weeks with the help of an expensive lockdown. The cumulative impact of the ‘bar clusters’ in the making on the country’s pandemic control efforts will be seen in a few weeks. Infections are sure to increase by leaps and bounds. Are the government leaders so drunk as to make such stupid decisions? They blundered in April by refusing to close the country during the traditional New Year period, thereby facilitating the formation of a massive cluster of infections and the subsequent emergence of the Delta variant. Five months on, they have given a turbo boost to the pandemic again by reopening liquor stores haphazardly. The elusive virus must be fist-pumping with glee.

The country is technically closed, but practically open. There is a lockdown, and at the same time there is no lockdown, paradoxical as it may sound. However, thankfully, the infection rate and the death toll have been decreasing significantly during the past several days. The government, out of sheer desperation for money, may have thought it would be able to rake in billions of rupees by way of taxes if the liquor outlets were allowed to reopen. But it should at least have ordered the police to keep a watchful eye on the desperate males gathering near liquor stores and ensure that they followed the Covid-19 protocol. The police were conspicuous by their absence. Were they also bending their elbows? (A picture of a traffic cop carrying a carton with VSOA—Very Special Old Arrack—written thereon is doing the rounds on social media!)

Several essential commodities are in short supply. There are complaints of shortages of milk powder and cooking gas. The government, which has chosen to ignore them, is keen to ensure an uninterrupted supply of alcohol! It is too shy to admit that it is desperate to collect taxes at the expense of people’s health; it claims that the demand for illicit brews is on the increase because the authorised liquor outlets have remained closed. If a rise in moonshine sales is the problem, the government must order the police to raid the illicit breweries, including those belonging to its supporters who manufacture a toxic brew euphemistically called ‘artificial toddy’.

Liquor stores will have to be reopened like other businesses, but that must not be done on a priority basis even before the pandemic situation is brought under control. Precautions must be taken to prevent overcrowding when they reopen after the lockdown is officially lifted. Let the buyers of liquor be made to queue up like other consumers who patiently wait for their turns near places such as the Sathosa outlets.