Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab inspected on Friday the Disaster Risk Management operation room at the Grand Serail, to take stock at the progress of work.
Diab was accompanied by Minister Zeina Akar, PCM Secretary General Judge Mahmoud Makie, Secretary General of the Supreme Defense CouncilMajor General Mahmoud Al-Asmar, and PM Advisor Khodor Taleb.
Premier Diab was briefed by Major General Al-Asmar and the DRM about the progress of work and the implementation of the lockdown decision.
After the briefing, Diab delivered the following remarks, “I commend your tremendous efforts. You are the unknown soldiers. These are joint efforts deployed by all parties, including the government, the security forces, and all relevant ministries. I am very proud of this achievement, which has been made possible for the first time through the digital solution pursued by developed countries that have spent millions of dollars on it, while we did not pay anything except the efforts made by relevant parties, especially the technicians and the Ministry of Telecommunications who followed up on the issue from the beginning. We thank you for working day and night; in fact, we managed, in 48 hours, to control the exceptions with great success. I reiterate that the Lebanese are our children and families, and we must work together, not only to implement order and decisions approved by the relevant inter-ministerial committee, but also to improve our performance rather than highlighting the gaps. Whoever works makes errors and we must correct them together. I also see that 17,000 requests for exceptions were rejected; this is a sign of the system’s effectiveness. I hope that this too shall pass as soon as possible, amid the worsening of the pandemic at the global level, especially in Europe. Thus, we must be patient until the bad patch is over with the least possible infections. The Ministry of Health, in cooperation with private hospitals, is seeking to increase the number of ICU beds; the Minister of Health, informed me before he got infected – and I wish him a speedy recovery - that private and public hospitals have increased the number of ICU beds to receive more patients. We must join hands to cope with this critical period. The Army will start distributing the sum of 400,000 LBP to not less than a quarter of a million families, that is, about a million and a half people; this process requires a month to be completed because it includes all Lebanese regions. This amount of money will not solve the economic problems, but will rather ease the difficult situation of the neediest families. As for the USD 246 million loan approved by the World Bank, we are taking all necessary measures and the relevant ministries will grant approvals early next week for the file to be referred to the Parliament. As for the corona vaccine, the Minister of Health has formed an expanded doctors' committee, chaired by Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Bizri, to develop an integrated plan with the support of Minister Hamad Hassan; the comprehensive plan will be launched in the near future”.