Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, says the state is considering the full re-opening of critical sectors of its economy.
Speaking on Sunday at a briefing after the state’s security council meeting held at the State House in Marina, Mr Sanwo-Olu said that despite the state’s plans, the move will not be made in a hurry.
The governor said that in the coming days, his administration would be rolling out Register-to-Open initiative as part of plans that would enable it assess the level of readiness of the players in the identified sectors for supervised operations.
According to him, officials from the Lagos State Safety Commission and Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency will be visiting restaurants, companies, religious houses to assess their level of readiness.
He said: “We are at a level where we are reviewing the other arms of the economy.
“In the coming days, we will be starting what we call Register-to-Open, which means all players in the restaurant business, event centres, entertainment, malls and cinemas will go through a form of re-registration and space management.
“There is a regulation that will be introduced to supervise this move. We will be coming to their facilities to assess their level of readiness for a future opening.
“I don’t know when that opening will happen in the weeks ahead, but we want these businesses to begin to tune themselves to the reality of COVID-19 with respect to how their work spaces need to look like.
“For us, it is not to say they should re-open fully tomorrow or any time; there has be a process guiding the re-opening.
“We will be mandating LASEPA and Safety Commission to begin the enumeration process and the agencies will be communicating with all relevant businesses and houses in the days ahead.
“I must, however, caution that this should not be misinterpreted as a licence for full opening; it is certainly not.
“The state’s economy is not ready for that now.”
Sanwo-Olu said the government agencies would also be visiting places of worship to evaluate their level of preparedness ahead of full reopening.
“If we see huge level of compliance, then it can happen in the next two to three weeks,” he said.
“If not, it could take a month or two months. It is until we are sure all of these players are ready to conform to our guidelines.”
The governor further said that the 10 staff of the Government House who tested positive for coronavirus had fully recovered and returned to work.
He also directed that the elderly must be given priority in bank and markets between 9am and 10:30am, after which younger customers should be allowed to transact their businesses.
