Alejandro Tercero
23.03.2020 21:29 h. Updated: 23.03.2020 21:40 h.
Foment del Treball has warned this Monday that “total confinement is not a proportionate measure in the current situation of health crisis and economic collapse, and may be counterproductive from those two perspectives”.
The main Catalan employers’ association is thus distancing itself from the demands of the regional government to further tighten the restrictions decreed by the Government, despite being among the strictest that have been taken in western countries.
Impact on health services
“Currently, only the companies and services that guarantee basic food, energy, transport of goods, food trade, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and health services, as well as all the supply and service companies that operate in telework, are operating as guarantee for the normal operation of the previous ones”, recalls Foment in a statement.
And it underlines that “the total closure would have a stronger impact on employment with more job losses” and that “it could seriously jeopardize the normal functioning of essential services, including strictly health services”.
Economic recovery at risk
The entity chaired by Josep Sánchez Llibre considers that “total confinement can be replaced by the adoption of all the necessary protection measures to avoid infections and guarantee the health of workers and of citizens themselves”.
And it insists that “the current measures decreed by the Government of Spain are sufficiently restrictive” and that “increasing them would put the economic recovery even more at risk after the pandemic”.
Health vs. economy
Foment stresses that “saying that total confinement prioritizes health over the economy is a Manichean approach”.
“It does not respect the principle of proportionality and, furthermore, it does not take into account that without the maintenance and subsequent recovery of the level of economic activity, many families will be exposed to subsistence problems”, it concludes.
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