The dysfunctional government, along with the outbreaks of MERS-CoV, worsening, and, guess W-H-O suffers, all of us, citizens, and there’s, NOTHING that any of us can do! Translated…
Starting back in May, as the epidemic of MERS-CoV spread faster, “no school sessions with continual learning”, all the way the classes stopped holding its sessions into the summer vacations, comparing to how my friends without children are working from home, or going to the offices by turns, the families with children, in order to, “squeeze” out the measures to adapt, we’re all, hollering aloud in pain.
The families that are dual-income, without any help, the parents would take turns taking their time off from work, to get the “epidemic caretaking leaves”, and, if we wanted more time off, then, that look would get on our supervisors’ faces, and some even stated clear: we are NOT a not-for-profit organization. Some workers, with companies that won’t allow for the leaves, nor allowed the workers to bring their young to work, they can only ask their older children, to babysit for the younger, while for the parents who owned their own businesses, most had taken their young to their shops, and, carefully set aside a “quarantine area” of play and homework for the kids, that they are supposed to stay inside of, to not get out from, to not interact with anyone and everyone who’s around and about them, after all, not going out to work means, no income.
As the government announced the extensions of level three alerts, spreading out the days of no classroom sessions, not only the department of education needed to get up and running for the online learning sessions, the Department of Labor also noted, that the well-sounding “fighting the spread of MERS-CoV leave” is a synonym for “unpaid leave”. To take care of their children and elders, the families that filed for these leaves, could NOT withstand the consequences of these, unpaid leaves; some of the employers, due to the impacts on MERS-CoV, couldn’t pay their workers, while the governments asking the enterprises to “be on the same boat”, to give the workers their leaves, isn’t enough at all.
What we need to be prepared for, is not just admitting that the epidemic is going to last even longer, also, we need to see how not enforcing the employer to pay for these caretaking leaves, how much loss would it cost the separate families that are in desperate need of that income, or how we may be at risk for long-term unemployment. There were the employers, due to the lacking in business, they’d, “suggested” their workers go and take their leaves of caretaking of the epidemic. We strongly advise, that the government should prioritize the budgets for the workers to get the extra money from the “caretaking leaves” due to the outbreaks.
And the rule set forth right now stated, that only workers with children twelve and under, or children with handicaps, or with elders who are in need of caretaking, are allowed to file for these leaves, but, every family’s needs are, different, and, schools of all levels across the island are out, while the elderly population, are most in need of looking after during the heights of this, current, outbreak, if they wanted to protect themselves, and not gone out, how will their get their groceries, and their daily living needs provided to them? These epidemic leaves should be provided for those who have someone they need to look after at home.
What worries us the most, is after how the outbreaks started happening at the end of last year, the medical workers on the frontlines started getting discriminated by the locals in the communities, their children were being bullied in school too, and now, not only the schools are out, the child care, long-term care programs are having it tightened too, which made these medical workers, other than working on the frontlines, still had to worry about who will look after their own young, and their own, elders. The same things are also happening in the social workers, like for Wanhwa, the social workers who worked locally risked contraction, to keep on providing the needs to the lower end of the socioeconomic status, to help lessen the impacts of the outbreaks on the lives of those who are, worse off. While, the workers who still helped maintained the living needs of long-term care, childcare, electrician/plumber, telecommunications, public transportation workers, they’d had to, keep to their posts, in times of the outbreaks, leaving their elders and children at home, and go to work, hoping that their needs, their trials, the extra money given to them for putting their lives on the lines, the resources to protect themselves, will be noted by the government, after all, this is a long road to fighting this epidemic that’s nowhere near ending yet that we’re, currently, on.
And so, this, is how hard the epidemic had, come down on some of these workers, in the various professions, and, does the government see it? HECK no! The government’s still, bullshitting us all, and not given us enough vaccines, as vaccination would be the only way of defense we can have, toward the outbreaks of MERS-CoV!