Meanwhile, one week after the partial easing of the lockdown on the state, Lagos State Government is considering reopening of the state to full business activities.
The state Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, yesterday said the government was considering full reopening of the critical sectors of its economy, adding, however, that the move would not be pushed in a hurry.
According to him, in the coming days, the government would be rolling out Register-to-Open initiative as part of the plans that would enable it to assess the level of readiness of the players in the identified sectors for supervised operations.
The governor spoke at a briefing after the State’s Security Council meeting held at the State House in Marina.
Sanwo-Olu said officials from Lagos State Safety Commission (LSSC) and Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA) will be visiting restaurants, companies, religious houses to assess their level of readiness.
With the size of the state’s economy and number of businesses that operate in its domain, the governor said the state government could not afford to keep people and businesses on lockdown permanently.
He said: “We are at a level where we are reviewing the other arms of the economy. In the coming days, we will be starting what we call Register-to-Open, which means all players in the restaurant business, event centres, entertainment, malls and cinemas will go through a form of re-registration and space management.
“There is a regulation that will be introduced to supervise this move. We will be coming to their facilities to assess their level of readiness for a future opening. I don’t know when that opening will happen in the weeks ahead, but we want these businesses to begin to tune themselves to the reality of COVID-19 with respect to how their work spaces need to look like.”
Sanwo-Olu also said government agencies would be visiting places of worship to evaluate their level of preparedness ahead of full reopening.
The governor disclosed that all the 10 staff of the Government House, who tested positive for COVID-19, had fully recovered and returned to their beats.
