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Singapore — Singapore Democratic Party secretary-general Chee Soon Juan commented on Monday morning (Sept 27) on the new restrictions imposed to curb the uptick in Covid-19 cases and prevent overwhelming healthcare systems, saying he does not understand the reason behind them.

“Here we go again,” wrote Dr Chee in a Facebook post. “Another surge in infections, another series of knee-jerk reactions that don’t make sense…

Where do these people get their ideas from? Whoever is writing them need to remove their heads from their derrière.” 

He then went on to list some examples of regulations that do not make sense to him.

“One, more than two persons from the same household can ride together in a taxi or PHV. But when they alight, they cannot dine-in together because restaurants are limited to two per table. They also cannot visit their relatives because households can only have up to two unique visitors per day.
Two, if the four persons are from different households, they cannot get into a single cab. But they can happily climb into a bus or MRT train.
Three, social gatherings are limited to two per group but group tours (eg. Duck Tours) can be up to 50.”

The SDP head, who opened a restaurant called Orange & Teal with his wife in June, went on to say that in the past few months the restaurant has gone from not allowing patrons to dine in, to allowing two people to eat together, then five—with conditions. 

And then dining in was again not allowed, “in less than a month,” before rules were changed again to allow two diners, then five, and then, with the latest restrictions announced last Friday (Sept 24), restaurants can have two people dining together again.

He then decried “no logical consistency” in what he termed a “yo-yo type of policy-making,” which he said was “driving everyone nuts.”

Furthermore, “It certainly doesn’t inspire confidence in their ability to tackle the pandemic which is putting businesses and jobs under immense pressure,” he added.

However, he wrote that events “that suit their purpose eg. National Day Parade or the GE last year” were allowed to take place.

“The tragedy is that the sorry state of affairs is confusing and demoralising to an already Covid-fatigued population,” wrote Dr Chee.

The SDP chief said that the party will be announcing an eight-point exit strategy to decisively tackle the pandemic, which was crafted by its healthcare panel led by infectious disease expert Prof Paul Tambyah. This strategy will be presented to the public and will open it for review, he added. /TISG

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