Category: News Feeds

Biglaw firms continue to be impacted by the market upheaval caused by the coronavirus crisis, and the way most law firms thus far have decided to steady their finances is through salary cuts. Today, we have news on a firm that’s chosen to “spread the burden as equitably as possible” with firmwide reductions.

Loeb & Loeb, a firm that’s well known for its entertainment practice group, will be slashing salaries across the board in an effort to “minimize layoffs and furloughs.” How deep are the firm’s temporary pay cuts? Here’s an excerpt from the memo that just went out (available on the next page):

One source doesn’t feel like these cuts are very equitable, since Loeb & Loeb “didn’t even pay close to market to begin with.” Not for nothing, but now might not be the best time to complain about market salaries considering the fact that the firm is doing this to try to keep associates in their jobs. Hopefully the firm remains true to its word.

(Flip to the next page to see the full memo from Loeb & Loeb.)

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

It’s easy to grow contemplative when isolated indoors in the COVID-19 world, where vicious cycles spin up like tumbleweeds in a Western. Work is a welcome distraction from increased parental duties, and parenting can be a welcome distraction from the overarching question of what a diminished economy means for job security. For those without dependents or kids in school, there are worries about elderly relatives or the risks associated with venturing out to replenish supplies.

Many of the plans that companies have put into place and Q2-4 goals can be thrown out the window at this point — if you’re even comfortable opening it -– as all of the factors that were weighed in coming up with those goals are now defunct. In the meantime, we patiently wait for answers to the questions that lie ahead that remain largely outside of our control as we responsibly social distance and watch to see if the curve flattens out in response to those individual efforts.

As lawyers, though, there is a palpable sense of growth amidst all this inertia -– at least for this practitioner.  Sure — there remains the daily drumbeat of meetings and deadlines. And now, layer on webinars about the CARES Act and training around risks associated with a new Work From Home economy. But beyond that, there is a sense of interconnectedness that brings comfort to those of us who tend to overthink things (read: every lawyer ever). An acknowledgment that we are in this together –- whatever “this” turns out to be when it’s all said and done.

The Other C Word

In the weeks since the virus took hold and developed from an oblique news story into an autobiography for each and every one of us, I have seen lawyers draw upon an attribute that unfortunately, the legal world doesn’t always emphasize or value but that should always have been there all along –- compassion.

It’s not to say that the end in any way justifies the means or that the pandemic is a positive happening in any sense at all. To be clear, it’s absolutely devastating and terrifying. But addressing a global pandemic together within the legal industry has been heartening and positive in allowing us to see each others’ softer sides, as well as the occasional offspring who might dart by during a videocall which is undeniably adorable and endearing.

Because the new normal is anything but normal, it seems that everyone is operating from a place of acceptance. Taxes aren’t going to get filed on time, SEC filings are going to be delayed, courts are on pause, conferences are getting rescheduled -– all of this is understandable and excusable because first and foremost we value our ability to survive this global pandemic. And we are rooting for all of humanity, as a disheveled team with chapped — but disinfected — hands, wearing comfy sweatpants.

Time For Change

It’s no secret that lawyers are overworked and highly stressed from bearing the weight of our clients’ problems. While adept at solving problems for others, we tend to shy away from finding solutions to our own angst. And support systems can be sparse, presumably because we cave in to the perception that lawyers should be able to maintain their composure and handle anything that comes their way without any help.

So while what is unfolding is a tragedy of epic proportions and while we are learning to juggle not just the demands of work but what is essentially home schooling –- the silver lining might just be that the legal world is a little bit kinder, a shade less cut-throat, a better place to find your way not just as a professional but also a person — a team in which we all root for each other.

As lawyers, we come up into the profession from school with the recognition that there are a limited number of A’s, and a set number of summer associate positions and permanent offers. Sharing precious answers or revealing personal challenges is anathema to success insofar as it allows your peers to overtake you. But the world in which we all now practice means virtual happy hours, words of support, heartfelt concern for others and a growing sense that while our companies and firms are important, our families and health come first. This is the world that I enjoy practicing law in, ironically. Someday, we will all be allowed to go back outside to the world we knew, let’s not lose this valuable lesson along the way.

Author’s Note: The American Bar Association has resources for lawyers who are struggling. If you are going through a hard time right now, please seek help or connect with me, and I’ll do my best to issue spot this alongside you.  We are all in this together.

Jennifer DeTrani is General Counsel and EVP of Nisos, a technology-enabled cybersecurity firm.  She co-founded a secure messaging platform, Wickr, where she served as General Counsel for five years.  You can connect with Jennifer on Wickr (dtrain), LinkedIn or by email at dtrain@nisos.com.

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Nanda E. Davis back to our pages.

Doctors and nurses in emergency rooms and ICUs, are on the front lines fighting this pandemic. They are also regular people, with children, families, exes, and court-ordered custody, visitation, and parenting time. Family law attorneys are about to see a lot of motions to suspend visitation for clients who are healthcare professionals. Should courts be limiting the time that children spend with those on the front lines of this pandemic?

First, check on executive and judicial orders in the states in question.

In some states, governors have entered executive orders dealing with activity and travel. Some of these orders mention custody and visitation. For example, in North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper’s travel ban provides a specific exception for travel for the purpose of custody and visitation. The Kentucky Supreme Court has issued an order specifically dealing with custody and parenting-time orders. Be sure to check on the orders in your state.

Next, look at the best interests of the children.

Assuming there is no executive or judicial order that conclusively solves the issue, then the overriding concern should be the bests interests of the child.  The CDC states that adults make up the most known cases to date and that children with confirmed cases generally present with very mild symptoms.  Practitioners and parents should also consider whether the child has asthma, is immune-compromised, or otherwise at greater risk from the coronavirus.  Experts have said that, in general, children have not been as at risk as adults from serious complications from the coronavirus, but that does not mean that in some cases, like with asthma, that a child might not be at greater risk.

Assuming the child does not have asthma or other health concerns, practitioners and parents should consider other factors, such as, how close is the child to a parent in the healthcare industry? Is that parent the primary custodian? Does the child regularly spend a lot of time with that parent? Would limiting time with that parent be traumatic to the child, especially given that the child’s routine is already impacted by the closure of schools, activities, and ability to be around friends?

Look at the specific circumstances of the parent in the healthcare industry.

Is the parent working in a hard-hit area like New York City, without proper protection like masks, gloves, and gowns? Or is the parent in a more rural area that has not seen as many cases? Is the parent working longer shifts? Is the parent doing everything he or she should upon return home, like washing clothes, removing shoes, etc.? Assuming the parent in the healthcare industry is taking proper precautions, like using N95 masks when performing procedures that may put him or her at greater risk for transmission, washing his or hands, avoiding touching his or her face, and removing all clothing upon return home, the risk of transmission may be very small.

Consider the other parent’s situation.

Is that parent at high risk due to asthma or is that parent immune-compromised? Does that parent share a house with or care for someone who is at greater risk due to age or health concerns? What is that parent’s work schedule? Is that parent maintaining proper social distancing? Is that parent also an essential employee, or otherwise still coming into contact with people? The circumstances for both parents need to be carefully considered.

Final considerations.

Above all else, this is about the child’s best interests; it’s not about what either parent wants. Lawyers should be on the lookout for opportunistic parents who are still angry at an ex and who may see this as a chance to limit that other parent’s time with the child. There is also a strong element of equity or fairness here as well: we are asking our healthcare professionals to put their lives on the line to save our lives. Every day, they go to work and fight this pandemic that has disrupted the entire world while the rest of us watch. Do we thank these individuals by deeming them unfit parents? Do we reward them by denying them downtime with their children? That doesn’t seem right.

Lawyers should weigh all these considerations when advising and guiding their clients during these difficult times.

(Image by Bella Muse/www.Bella-Muse.com)

Nanda E. Davis opened her firm, Davis Law Practice, in Roanoke, Virginia, in 2014.  She specializes in divorce, custody, and matters involving Child Protective Services.  She is the mother of two boys and active in the Roanoke Chapter of the Virginia Women’s Attorney’s Association. More about her can be found on her website and she can be reached by email at nanda@davislawpractice.com.

If you’re a lawyer practicing in a state that has instituted a “shelter in place” mandate, your comfortable daily routine has most likely been rudely disrupted. Those of you who are introverts are probably thrilled with this sudden turn of events, but if you’re an extrovert, well, my thoughts go out to you.

Regardless of your personality type, due to the pervasiveness and contagiousness of COVID-19 you’ve no doubt developed an unexpected and resounding sense of empathy for Howie Mandel, which by chance coincided with a sudden onset of mysophobia. As a result, you may have found yourself seeking to avoid face-to-face contact with your germ-ridden fellow humans by reluctantly resorting to videoconferencing via Zoom, a platform that is suddenly all the rage in today’s pandemic-ridden world.

It wasn’t always this way. Like most lawyers, prior to March 1, you most likely associated the word “zoom” with a strange little kid in a commercial who was obsessed with Mazdas, of all things. But now you’re a videoconferencing fool.

Despite having no idea what you’re doing, you’re giving it the old college try and are bumbling along. Hopefully you’ve managed to avoid using the facilities while your webcam was on and have likewise taken Bob Ambrogi’s Zoom etiquette tips to heart.

If so, then you’re well on your way to Zooming like a pro. But to truly advance to videoconferencing mastery, you need take it to the next level.

Ready to kick it up a notch? If so, here are a few of my favorite Zoom tips and tricks.

Bling Up Your Background

Haven’t you always wanted to be one of the cool kids? Well with a blinged-up Zoom background, that wish can become reality. With this setting, you can change your background to display any image you choose, whether it’s the bridge of the Enterprise, the Simpsons’ living room, the rolling waves on a beach, or a beautiful city skyline.

Changing your background is easy. First you’ll need to download images to your computer. You can search Google for desktop wallpaper or Zoom background images and then save your chosen pictures to your computer. You can also search for video background images as well.

Then, once a meeting has started, click on the up arrow located next to “Stop Video” in the left corner of the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. Then click on “Choose Virtual Background” from the pop-up menu. Lastly, click on the plus sign (+) located in the middle of the “Settings” screen on the right side and upload your chosen images from your computer. Choose the image you’d like as your background and voilá! You’re officially the coolest kid on the block!

Be Your Best Self

If you’re like most people, you’re not exactly dressed for the office when working from home. That’s where Zoom’s fabulous “Touch Up My Appearance” setting comes in. It provides a soft focus à la Cybill Shepherd on Moonlighting.

To activate this feature, once a meeting has started, click on that same up arrow located next to “Stop Video” (as mentioned above) and choose “Video Settings” from the menu. Then check the “Touch Up My Appearance” option located under the “My Video” section. That’s  all there is to it! Now your best self will be on display for all to see.

Unmute With Ease

First and foremost, always mute yourself if you’re not talking. It’s just basic videoconferencing etiquette. Then, once you’ve done so, you can always unmute yourself by clicking on the mute button.

But if you’d like to make a quick comment or someone asks you to briefly provide input, another option available is that you can simply hold the space bar down to unmute yourself while you speak and then release the space bar when you’re done. After releasing it, you’ll be muted once again.

Abandon Snark, All Ye Who Enter Here

If your Zoom meeting host has enabled private chats, you may want to treat the private chat just as you would emails or text messages. In other words, as the saying goes, dance like no one’s watching, but Zoom chat in private as if it will someday be read in a deposition.

This is because you often have the ability choose to save chats that occurred during a meeting to your computer’s local drive. When you do this, all public chats and any of your private chats are saved in a chat log. The same goes for anyone else who chooses to save the chat: they can save public chats and private chats they were involved in. This means that private chats don’t necessarily disappear once a meeting is over, since whomever you were chatting with could save the private chat and later share it with others. So to be on the safe side, ensure that your private chats are snark-free.

Be A Control Freak

Last, but not least, familiarize yourself with the settings that allow you to control meetings and participants. By doing so, you’ll save yourself a lot of hassles down the road.

When scheduling a meeting, you can choose whether to require a password for the meeting and also restrict access to only users who have signed in. Under “advanced settings” you can choose to “mute participants on entry,” which can sometimes come in handy depending on the personalities of those attending.

You can also manage participants during the meeting. To do this, click on “Manage Participants” in the middle of the toolbar on the bottom of the screen. This will open up a sidebar on the right where you have the option to choose to mute all participants. Then under “More” you can choose to lock the meeting to prevent new participants from joining, and can also choose whether to allow participants to unmute themselves or rename themselves.

Those are just a few ways to up your Zoom game in the days to come. Just think, a few weeks ago you’d have scoffed at the idea of a video conference, and here you are, nearly a Zoom master. The times they sure are a-changin’.

Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

American law firms seem to be in a full panic thanks to the arrival of the novel coronavirus pandemic that’s been sweeping the globe. From salary cuts to furloughs to layoffs, these firms have done just about everything as far as cost-saving measures are concerned to maintain their financial health — well, almost everything.

Summer associate season is just around the corner, and while some firms have deferred start dates and others have embraced the possibility of remote work, others still have been dragging their feet, waiting for some guidance before deciding to make a move that could impact the rest of their student employees’ lives.

As Zeughauser Group legal consultant Kent Zimmermann has mused regarding this year’s summer programs, “[s]ome [firms] have canceled, made [an] internal announcement, but have not yet publicly announced the decision.” Today, we’ll be publicly announcing one law firm’s decision for them.

FordHarrison, one of the nation’s largest labor and employment law firms, contacted students earlier this week to let them know that its summer program would not be taking place. Here’s an excerpt from the letter students received:

We have made the difficult decision to cancel our 2020 summer associate program as a result of the uncertainty and challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since March 16, many FordHarrison offices have been operating remotely and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Relationship building and face-to-face interaction between lawyers and summer associates are essential to our recruiting process and the opportunity we committed to provide to you. Client demand for our services remains high, but it is very difficult to anticipate what the coming months may bring even when the on-site work resumes. Given this level of uncertainty, we determined we will not have the appropriate learning opportunities available to provide a meaningful summer associate experience.

We reached out to FordHarrison for comment, but have not yet received word back. We will update this article with any responses we receive.

While we understand where the firm is coming from, this really puts the law students who expected to spend the summer working at FordHarrison — in any form, remotely or in person — in a horrible position. Not only will they be jobless, but the financial insecurity the firm’s would-be employees will be facing during a public health crisis is beyond the pale. “It hurts to know that summer associates matter so little,” said one of the law students affected by FordHarrison’s decision. “I hope I’ll be able to find something before May (or, at the very least, I hope I can even pay rent).”

Best of luck to all of the law students who were affected by FordHarrison’s decision to suspend it summer associate program due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

(Flip to the next page to see the full letter from FordHarrison.)

What is your firm planning to do with its summer associate program amid coronavirus concerns? Please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “Coronavirus Summer Associate Program”) and let us know. Stay safe.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Sad news from the front lines of the coronavirus. Retired Southern District of New York Judge Kevin Duffy passed away from COVID-19 yesterday. He was 87 years old.

Duffy, who served in S.D.N.Y. for 44 years, retired from the bench in 2016 and worked with his son, Kevin Duffy, Jr,. at the Greenwich, Connecticut, firm of Duffy & Staab. The former assistant U.S. attorney and the administrator of the New York regional office of the Securities and Exchange Commission was nominated to the federal bench in 1972 by President Richard Nixon.

At S.D.N.Y., Duffy oversaw a number of prominent trials. In the 1980s, he presided over a trial of several members of the Gambino organized crime family, as well as the federal trial of the infamous Brink’s armed car robbery. He was also the judge assigned the two trials related to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

One of his S.D.N.Y. colleagues, Judge P. Kevin Castel, told the New York Law Journal this about Duffy:

“He’s had some of the most important trials there are,” Castel said. “Yet despite all of this, in 44 years of service to the court, many of us know that at the heart of his greatness were small acts of care and concern for others, particularly at times when they were experiencing a bad period in their life. … John Sprizzo, who was a judge of this court, once said to me that with friends like Kevin Duffy, you don’t need many friends.”

Shawn Regan, a former Duffy clerk and now a partner at Hunton Andrews Kurth, had similarly wonderful things to say about the judge:

“On the occasion of his 40th anniversary on the bench, he revealed to an audience the central element of his legendarily brutal law clerk interview process,” Regan said in an email. “He said: ‘It was quite simple, really. I was looking for people who I could have as my friends for the rest of my life.’”

And his son remembered him as “as good as [fathers] get,” saying, “He, quite frankly, was one of my best friends, if not my best friend.”

Our thoughts go out to his family, friends, and colleagues during this difficult time.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Zimbabwe’s spiral into economic chaos and uncertainty over the last decade has left the country with few functioning industries and an over-reliance on imports of nearly everything from food and furniture to building materials and even toothpicks.

The economic upheaval and notorious hyperinflation has decimated much of the country’s manufacturing base which in previous decades had been supported by its higher learning institutions.

Now that the country has been put on a 21-day lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus after reporting eight Covid-19 cases and one death, the country has had to look within as it can’t compete on the global open market for imported gloves, masks and hand sanitizers given the huge demand.

There is additional pressure because hundreds of doctors and nurses in Zimbabwe have refused to work until they are guaranteed by health authorities there will be enough personal protective equipment for their usage. The Zimbabwe Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association has been asking for adequate equipment outlined in the World Health Organization’s guidelines including masks, eyewear and gowns.

The government has turned to its tertiary institutions with engineering and technology capacity including University of Zimbabwe, Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT), Great Zimbabwe University (GZU), Midlands State University and the Harare Institute of Technology, among others, for production to meet local demand.

These universities are located in various provinces around the country and they are supplying hand sanitizers, masks, gloves and other personal protective clothing to clinics, hospitals and security personnel in those provinces.

Higher education minister professor Amon Murwira told Quartz Africa the hand sanitizers, masks and gloves were made to meet the standards of the WHO and the Standards Association of Zimbabwe. “Universities are all where it starts. (Our) sanitizers are made to meet standards,” he said.

“We are supplying health-related institutions (such as) hospitals and clinics through the Health ministry. We are also targeting government institutions (including) police and other public interface institutions to combat the spread of the virus,” says Dr Clinton Musekiwa, marketing director at CUT.  He says the university is producing more than 2 000 masks per day and already supplied around 5,000 masks to several health institution with more orders from public health facilities and big businesses.

GZU, which is also manufacturing masks, has procured glycerol and hydro peroxide and ethanol from Tongaat Hullet-Zimbabwe’s largest sugar producer-to manufacture hand sanitizers.

Post published in: Featured

Where bread is retailing at Z$40, up from Z$30 the previous day; where there hasn’t been water for months and there’s sporadic access to borehole water; where neighbourhoods have no power and must queue for gas; there is growing desperation and precious little hope of observing physical distancing, says Crecey Kuyedzwa, Fin24’s correspondent in Zimbabwe.

—

Like many countries across the globe, Zimbabwe started its 21-day total lockdown on Monday 30 March 2020.

The lockdown is meant to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which is wreaking havoc across the world. Lives have been lost and economies are crumbling.

Before the lockdown, Zimbabwe had seven confirmed cases of Covid-19, including one fatality, but authorities felt it prudent to declare the country was on lockdown.

With Zimbabwe critically short of testing kits, ventilators, personal protective equipment and medical drugs, its biggest weapon to fight Covid-19 was to encourage social distancing.

“I want all of you to act as if you already have the virus,” President Emmerson Mnangagwa said in his address to the nation on Monday evening.

He said the lockdown was an opportunity to save lives “by staying at home. By washing your hands and by keeping at least two metres’ distance from one another.”

Companies were asked to close, except those that were considered essential.

Private passenger transporters were also ordered off the roads, with the state-owned Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (ZUPCO) being the only one allowed to continue operating.

Most informal markets and businesses, which market watchers say largely drive Zimbabwe’s economy, were also asked to close.

The luxury of distancing

While all this was done in order to maximise the impact of social distancing, it has only managed to stop people from engaging in their various economic activities both in the suburbs and in the Harare CBD, where streets are now empty.

Law enforcement officers are not as visible as we expected, and on the few occasions they are seen, they are packed in a lorry, more than 50 in a 35-tonne truck, with no face masks. A bad example for practising social distancing – or physical distancing, as some prefer to call it.

Physical distancing has also proved to be a luxury for those in low-income, high-density suburbs.

On day two, people were still moving freely, only avoiding the main roads. At the local grocery shopping area in Glen View 1, 20km south west of Harare CBD, small groups of men were sitting enjoying their beer, sharing opaque beer even, oblivious of what this might do to their health if one of them were positive for the virus.

No power, a hunt for gas

On Saturday, after hearing that that a 21-day lockdown lay ahead, I set out to buy gas, as we were left with four days’ worth of supplies.

My neighbourhood and many others have not been connected to the power grid, 10 years after establishment.

The power utility, ZESA, does not have the required resources like cables and transformers, and – to a large extent – power itself.

Under normal circumstances, however, this would still only take me a couple of minutes, but on this day the queue for gas tanks was snaked for metres upon metres, and I had to spend six hours waiting for gas. Social distancing was a luxury.

Only one lady had a face mask. I had with me a small bottle of sanitiser, which I would apply every time we took turns to move the gas tanks, but as the day progressed, I abandoned its use. It was just not convenient at the time.

There’s toilet paper, but no one can afford it

Although we had stocked up on food the previous week, there were a few items we still needed. While government had assured the nation that grocery retailers would be open during the lockdown, one can never be 100% sure.

So on Sunday, we set out to get some food items, only to be greeted by an unpleasantly long queue. Again, physical distancing was a vain hope. While the outlet was letting in a few people at a time, outside customers were not leaving even a centimetre between them, as they pushed and shoved.

Inside the shop, it was evident supplies were running low. Some shelves were empty. We failed to get some basic necessities. Other products saw price hikes.

As for tissues and toilet paper? Unlike in other countries, it’s a product that is abundant in Zimbabwe. Hyperinflation has pushed the price toilet paper beyond the reach of many. Bread was now retailing at Z$40 up from Z$30 the previous day. But people still queued without keeping any distance.

It was the same today as I went out in preparation to write this article.

Desperation trumps distancing

People still queued to get some cooking gas. For two days, several neighbourhoods have not had power, forcing people to look for gas as an alternative, but it is also not readily available.

By 08:00hrs on Tuesday, the gas queue at one of the outlets was long and winding, with the place yet to open.

Another queue, as long as 50 metres, had also formed at grocery retail outlet that was yet to open.

Word was that subsidised maize meal had been delivered the previous night. With prices of basic products increasing by the day, as reflected by inflation for February 2020 at 540.16%, government is providing subsidised maize meal at Z$70.

However, supplies can’t meet the growing demand.

As a result, physical distancing was practically impossible. People shoved and jostled to keep their position in the queue. Some shouted at each other, risking drops of saliva.

Of the hundreds in the queue, not even one had a face mask.

As I drove back home, I passed through a community borehole, where a line was slowly forming. The neighbourhood has not had water for months and every day, residents come out to fetch water, and help each other pump it up. There is no sight of face masks or handy sanitisers, not in the ghetto.

The lockdown has only managed to stop economic activities, but social gatherings are inevitable.

Only hope and prayer can save Zimbabwe from Covid-19.

Post published in: Featured