The Environmental Health Officers Association (EHOAN), Lagos State Chapter, has said that the increase in number of people struggling to patronise banks’ Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) was a source of community transmission of coronavirus.
Mr Taiwo Awonuga, its President, made the observation in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Friday.
Awonuga was reacting to findings that social distancing was being jettisoned at many ATM points.
He said that it was the obligations of banks to ensure their customers obeyed all safety guidelines.
Awonuga decried the rise in the number of infected persons in the country and tasked banks to streamline their services to be in tandem with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control’s (NCDC) social distancing recommendations.
“The rat race going on in many ATMs outlets is not good for the fight against community transmissions of the pandemic. People line up in the sun amid sweat and droppings from their bodies.
“It calls for a change in attitude from banks and customers too, if we must halt community transmissions of the coronavirus, especially in the suburb where ATMs are few but attract crowds.
“The confusion at ATM points are a common sight in the country because people need money to cater for daily needs. In that zeal to get cash, they lose their guard and get infected by vectors around them,” he said.
He advised people to be safety conscious in public, calling on the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on the management of the coronavirus to compel banks to open up more cash dispensing outlets to forestall people getting infected at crowded ATMs.
YOU SHOULD NOT MISS THESE HEADLINES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
Buy and read digital replicas of your TRIBUNE titles by subscribing through E-VENDING
COVID-19: We Don’t Know Whereabouts Of Chinese Doctors ― PTF • Don’t ask me where they are ― Health Minister
The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, on Thursday, said that it is not aware of the whereabouts of the Chinese doctors and health professionals who were brought to Nigeria some weeks ago to help the country in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic… Read full story
Amid Uproar, Lagos Backtracks, Says Dubai Returnee Didn’t Die Of COVID-19
Lagos State government on Thursday night retracted its earlier claim that one of the returnees from Dubai, died of COVID-19. Other returnees, quarantined at an isolation centre in Lekki, had protested in a viral video clip, disproving the earlier official position… Read full story