The corona virus nightmare...
It may have been conceived as a genuine attempt to stem the coronavirus onslaught on our land, but it is being implemented as naked power driven arrogance. A friend of mine told me about his experiences when applying for a permit to visit his field. Like me, he lives alone. I will try my best to reproduce his experiences verbatim, i.e. in his own words:
"Comerade Target (that's me), there is just no sense in this so-called lockdown. As you know I stay alone, and as you know I have crops in my field. So the other day, after being denied a permit by Government lockdown agents to visit my field on numerous occasions, I decided to make an application for a permit online. I accessed the web page okay, and started filling the page. Alas, the page MANDATES me to enter names of my household contacts. But like I said, I stay alone. Therefore I have no household contacts. Another thing, I will be ALONE in my field all the time I will spend there. Therefore unless I decide to go somewhere else, something which the permit will not be authorizing me to do anyway, there is ZERO chance of me getting the corona virus or passing it to anybody else, BECAUSE I WILL BE ALONE IN MY CROP FIELD. The nearest person, whose presence I will not be aware of naturally, will be at least three kilometers away.
So, comerade Target, I, the most well protected applicant for a travel permit, could not apply for the permit online. The mandatory information about household contacts barred me from applying online.
I then decided to go back to the arrogant agents who denied me the permit in the past. It was a desperate move. I had to go to my field. The Government agents again told me to go seek the permit from the officer "who deals with applications for field visits" more than a kilometer away. I re-visited the officer concerned. She told me to go back to where I came from because she only issues permits to people whose fields are in her "region". Since my field is "outside" her region, and to get to it I have to drive past town and a couple villages, she did not have authority to issue such permit. Note that save for my attempt to apply online, each of my numerous visits to the permit granting agents forced me to mix with at least fifty people, none of whom wore a face mask. Everybody there spoke directly into the face of the Government agents and they didn't seem to mind - there was nothing that they could do. So I again went back to the central application point. The man in charge recognised me from a distance. When I arrived I was told that permits are finished for the day. I must come back tomorrow. I managed to tell them what the "agriculture" officer to whom they had sent me had said; that the permit to leave her "region" can only be obtained from them. The "central" officers agreed with that; but pointed out that the permit they have authority to give only grants me permission to leave their region and visit town, where I will go to the District Officer's office to apply for a permit to visit my field. I gave up for the day.
The following day I arrived a lot earlier, well before midday. I found some fifty people gathered outside, all waiting for permits. While I was there some twenty people arrived and joined the queue behind me. There was nothing like social distancing in sight. I was told by some people there that they had been waiting for more than three hours for a chance to submit an application. I stuck around. Luckily, the man in charge went past me and other people in the queue. I reminded him that I had come to apply for a permit to go and apply for another permit to visit my field. He suggested that I tell the lady registering the applications all that, as if it was the first time I did. Nonetheless, I complied, and patiently waited in the queue. I knew that if granted the permit I was going to find another queue at the District Officer's office. There would probably be even more people there, and given that I would be in town, chances of catching Covid19, if indeed there is such a thing, would be greatly increased.
After some forty to fifty minutes, we were told that there were no more permits being issued. The quota for the day had been exhausted! We should come back the following day. I asked myself how a limited quota is established to visit a town; how many people are too many to visit a town if all have genuine need. Most puzzling, Comerade, is why a person who is ideally protected from Covid19 would be forced to go into crowds when all he needs is to visit his field ALONE from his house where he lives ALONE. This lockdown serves no useful purpose in as far as Covid19 is concerned. Maybe compilation of the 2024 voters' roll is again on some people's minds. Nothing else makes any sense Comerade".
"Comerade Target (that's me), there is just no sense in this so-called lockdown. As you know I stay alone, and as you know I have crops in my field. So the other day, after being denied a permit by Government lockdown agents to visit my field on numerous occasions, I decided to make an application for a permit online. I accessed the web page okay, and started filling the page. Alas, the page MANDATES me to enter names of my household contacts. But like I said, I stay alone. Therefore I have no household contacts. Another thing, I will be ALONE in my field all the time I will spend there. Therefore unless I decide to go somewhere else, something which the permit will not be authorizing me to do anyway, there is ZERO chance of me getting the corona virus or passing it to anybody else, BECAUSE I WILL BE ALONE IN MY CROP FIELD. The nearest person, whose presence I will not be aware of naturally, will be at least three kilometers away.
So, comerade Target, I, the most well protected applicant for a travel permit, could not apply for the permit online. The mandatory information about household contacts barred me from applying online.
I then decided to go back to the arrogant agents who denied me the permit in the past. It was a desperate move. I had to go to my field. The Government agents again told me to go seek the permit from the officer "who deals with applications for field visits" more than a kilometer away. I re-visited the officer concerned. She told me to go back to where I came from because she only issues permits to people whose fields are in her "region". Since my field is "outside" her region, and to get to it I have to drive past town and a couple villages, she did not have authority to issue such permit. Note that save for my attempt to apply online, each of my numerous visits to the permit granting agents forced me to mix with at least fifty people, none of whom wore a face mask. Everybody there spoke directly into the face of the Government agents and they didn't seem to mind - there was nothing that they could do. So I again went back to the central application point. The man in charge recognised me from a distance. When I arrived I was told that permits are finished for the day. I must come back tomorrow. I managed to tell them what the "agriculture" officer to whom they had sent me had said; that the permit to leave her "region" can only be obtained from them. The "central" officers agreed with that; but pointed out that the permit they have authority to give only grants me permission to leave their region and visit town, where I will go to the District Officer's office to apply for a permit to visit my field. I gave up for the day.
The following day I arrived a lot earlier, well before midday. I found some fifty people gathered outside, all waiting for permits. While I was there some twenty people arrived and joined the queue behind me. There was nothing like social distancing in sight. I was told by some people there that they had been waiting for more than three hours for a chance to submit an application. I stuck around. Luckily, the man in charge went past me and other people in the queue. I reminded him that I had come to apply for a permit to go and apply for another permit to visit my field. He suggested that I tell the lady registering the applications all that, as if it was the first time I did. Nonetheless, I complied, and patiently waited in the queue. I knew that if granted the permit I was going to find another queue at the District Officer's office. There would probably be even more people there, and given that I would be in town, chances of catching Covid19, if indeed there is such a thing, would be greatly increased.
After some forty to fifty minutes, we were told that there were no more permits being issued. The quota for the day had been exhausted! We should come back the following day. I asked myself how a limited quota is established to visit a town; how many people are too many to visit a town if all have genuine need. Most puzzling, Comerade, is why a person who is ideally protected from Covid19 would be forced to go into crowds when all he needs is to visit his field ALONE from his house where he lives ALONE. This lockdown serves no useful purpose in as far as Covid19 is concerned. Maybe compilation of the 2024 voters' roll is again on some people's minds. Nothing else makes any sense Comerade".
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