Madam Justina Owusu-Banahene, the Sunyani Municipal Chief Executive, on Thursday said the Assembly’s COVID-19 taskforce would arrest school children without nose masks.

Assembly officials, she said, would subsequently identify and sanction parents of those children failing to wear the masks.

She advised parents to provide their children with nose masks and hand sanitisers to protect them against COVID-19.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Mad Owusu-Banahene, who is also the Bono Regional Minister-designate, said the Assembly would deploy its COVID-19 taskforce to patrol and enforce the protocols in the municipality.

The 52-member task force comprises personnel of the Third Garrison Battalion (3BN), Police, Fire Service, Immigration Service and Prison Service.

As children returned to school, Mad Owusu-Banahene stressed the readiness and determination of the Assembly to ensure that all school children were safe both in the school environment and in the Sunyani township.

She said the Assembly, with support from the central government, had already supplied basic schools in the Municipality with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), including Veronica Buckets, nose masks and alcohol-based hand sanitisers.

She tasked basic school heads and teachers to ensure that children were protected in schools by ensuring they used the PPE appropriately.

She noted that the COVID-19 taskforce did an excellent work last year and that helped the Assembly to contain and prevent the spread of the pandemic.

The taskforce was, however, withdrawn along the way because the masses were adhering to the protocols.

“Since the taskforce was withdrawn from the street of Sunyani, many people are complacent and are not wearing nose masks, and observing social distancing in public places,” she said, a situation that could trigger the spread of the virus in the Municipality.

Mad Owusu-Banahene indicated the Assembly would also support and re-ignite activities of ‘Masks Ambassadors’, a group that championed the use of nose or face masks.

She, therefore, appealed to corporate and religious bodies, and civil society organisation to support the Ambassadors with nose masks for public distribution.

To promote social distancing, she explained, her outfit had re-adopted the shift system that would separate traders and market women to lessen congestion at the Nana Bosoma Central Market and the Sunyani main market.

She was thankful to the Sunyani Traditional Council, and Nana Bosoma Asor NKrawiri II, Paramount Chief of Sunyani, in particular, for the support given to the assembly last year.

The gesture, she noted, helped to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that the council would continue with such assistance.

Mad Owusu-Banahene said government alone could not shoulder the responsibility of the COVID-19 campaign and implored everybody to come to contribute and ensure the masses adhere to the health safety protocols.