A Senior Chief in Nakuru County has urged the government to consider listing village drunkards among the high-risk group of being infected with coronavirus, since hand washing, social distancing and wearing masks are foreign ideas for them.
Chief John Koskei of Waseges location Subukia Sub-county said much as they have tried to educate the drunkards about the disease they have maintained a strong ingrained don’t care attitude towards the pandemic.
Koskei was speaking Friday, during a tour by KNA of his location, where a number of the drunkards lying forlornly on the village paths were witnessed.
The chief said much as they have tried to arrest and create awareness, their efforts are ignored with contempt and many of them strongly believe that the diseases could only infect urban dwellers. The dismissingly refer covid-19 as a Nairobi disease.
One of the drunkards who refused to be named for fear of arrest shouted, “We are so far away from the disease, please leave us alone, nobody comes here to solve our problems, why do you want us to be part of your disease issues, and breathing with those ugly masks is difficult !,”
Koskei said the general attitude in the villages was a far- off remote diseases, which has very little to do with them and much as he keeps on reminding them of the rising numbers of cases, they pay no attention to the warnings at all.
He added that the drunkards find it difficult to maintain social distancing since they share the drinking utensils, which are basically discarded tins of various cooking fats, and ones they get intoxicated they sleep close to each other on the floors.
The Chief commended the government for initiating the Nairobi lockdown and appealed to urban dwellers to avoid going to the villages since if covid-19 gets to the rural areas, it would spread like wild-fire, and the drunkards will definitely be the fragile linkage and many would regrettably be wiped out.
By Veronica Bosibori
