Nicole Mc Donald says PM’s ‘no point in saving people’ comment is being taken out of context

Senior Communications Officer in the office of the Prime Minister, Nicole Mc Donald, has attempted to clarify a statement made by Prime Minister Allen Chastanet, during an address to the nation on Thursday night.

Indicating that activities held over Christmas and New Year’s were a ‘huge contributor’ to the recent spike in COVID-19 cases, Chastanet said: “What we need to recognize is that the sacrifice that we have to make is that we must minimize our social activities. The government has continued to try to work with the population to make sure that we minimize the impact on our economy because there’s no point in saving people if in fact their livelihoods are being affected. We’ve repeated to say that it’ll be a very difficult and daunting task for any government in the world to survive a full shutdown to the extent that we had in the months of April and May.”

In a call to Timothy Poleon’s Newsspin program today, Friday Mc Donald said that the statement is being taken ‘completely out of context.’ “The point that the prime minister sought to make was that there’s no sense in attempting to stop the spread of covid, if it means in the process you deny people their means of making a living, their means of being able to feed themselves or feed their families,” said Mc Donald.

“We have to do both and that means we have to follow the protocols. So despite the fact that the mischief makers want to hone in on this one line, I just want to encourage Saint Lucians to watch the entire interview; it’s available on social media for everyone to see.”

She went on: “From the beginning of the year when covid first hit us, that has always been the priority of the prime minister, to ensure that we protect the lives of people first and then we have to think about how do we learn to co-exist with covid— it’s not going away right away. We need to find a way to save lives yes, but to also have people back at work in a safe environment. So taking that one line and twisting it, is not going to change everything the government has done so far for the year in order to assist Saint Lucians.”

Mc Donald stated that the government has strengthened health services, refurbished the Victoria Hospital and sourced ventilators. “All these things are to save lives,” she declared. “So to take one line from what the prime minister said completely out of context and make it seem as if the prime minister or the government doesn’t care, it’s a very sad day, it’s not a good way to start the year and once again, we are calling on the Opposition to join the fight against COVID-19.”