Phaahla defends plan for new Covid rules

• Proposals panned as state of disaster by stealth • We don’t want to control lives — minister

A day after President Cyril Ramaphosa ended the state of disaster, health minister Joe Phaahla on Tuesday defended the government’s plan to manage the coronavirus pandemic with amendments to existing health regulations, a decision critics say will give him too much power to impose restrictions that limit civil liberties.

Ramaphosa announced on Monday night that the cabinet had agreed to lift the national state of disaster on April 5, having previously argued that it was still needed to enable the government to respond to developments in the spread of Covid-19.

After repealing regulations implemented under the Disaster Management Act, it will put in place a limited number of interim regulations to ensure continuity with key public health measures and the social relief of distress grant, while it is finalising alternative legislation.

A key aspect of its postdisaster plan is a slew of proposed changes to three sets of regulations to the National Health Act and regulations to the International Health Regulations Act, which were released for public comment on March 15.

“I have heard some commentators alleging all this government wants to do is control people’s lives. That is very far from the truth,” said Phaahla, dismissing criticism that he was overstepping the powers set out in the National Health Act with the proposals he flighted last month.

The draft regulations have been panned by scientists, opposition parties and lobby groups, who say they are illconceived, perpetuate the ability of the government to impose economically damaging restrictions, and place too much emphasis on trying to record and contain a highly transmissible disease that is largely asymptomatic and now widespread.

The DA wrote to Phaahla on

Monday night, urging him to retract the amendments.

“It is extremely worrying to us that, despite the formal lifting of this state of disaster, our government now seems to be hell-bent on normalising the restrictions that we faced for so long by introducing regulations to the Health Act that will effectively normalise this very abnormal state of affairs and shift the power of unnatural regulations to the minister of health,” said DA spokesperson Cilliers Brink.

The Freedom Front Plus (FF+) said replacing the state of disaster with the new health regulations proposed by the minister was no more than a transfer of political power and it enabled the government to continue imposing restrictions that harmed the economy.

“It is unacceptable that the government is still clinging to senseless and restrictive regulations, which have already caused the country so much damage,” said FF+ health spokesperson Philip van Staden.

Phaahla said the health department had “received thousands” of comments in response to the proposed health regulations.

The public has been given until April 15 to submit input.

The National Employers Association of SA said it was preparing a high court challenge against some of the health regulations. It said the proposed regulations would place SA in a permanent state of disaster and were at odds with the counsel provided by the ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19.

For example, the committee had recommended scrapping Covid-19 contact tracing and quarantine, saying that while these measures were appropriate in the early stages of the pandemic when authorities sought to contain transmission, they are no longer useful.