These photos of quarantined Kenyans sleeping on the floor has caused an uproar.
Activist Boniface Mwangi on Wednesday, April 22, exposed what appeared to be deplorable conditions that Kenyans in mandatory quarantine were going through.
Photos of Kenyans in poor conditions have been circulating.
Boniface highlighted a few things:
In a series of photos on social media, the activist highlighted how people were crammed up together with some being forced to sleep on the floor at the Kenya High School quarantine facility with officials having to turn away more people being brought into the government facilities while releasing some to go home.
The government-run [quarantine] centre at Kenya High School is filled to capacity. People are forced to sleep on the floor. Officials running the facility are now turning away people brought by the police, last night, some people were released for lack of beds.
The activist went on further to blame the police for overstepping their mandate as by bundling together people suspected to have contracted Covid-19 without testing them.
Legally, the police have no right to quarantine anyone without medically confirming their status. The most logical thing that the president should have ordered is that every person arrested should undergo a test and those found positive be quarantined while the negative people be given community service.
He also stated that:
People shouldn’t be jailed for petty offences. Our jails are already overcrowded with innocent people, and the courts are closed.
The post elicited mixed reactions online with some condemning the government with others condemning the public for being indisciplined and disregarding government directives on Covid-19.
Investigative journalist John Allan Namu weighed in questioning the soundness of the government’s isolation protocols.
Looking at the decrees on sending people into quarantines versus the pictures coming out of those same quarantine facilities, I only ask a question what is a quarantine facility supposed to look like? The impression given was that these are facilities where people are sufficiently isolated.
One Kipkoech Kimutai urged the government to fine Kenyans instead of forcing them into quarantine where the risk of infection was much higher.
It would be better for people who have broken the curfew rules be fined rather than forced into quarantine halls that are posing more risk to them, soon these quarantine areas might become infection hotspots.
(H/T Kenyan News)