After five weeks shutdown, the federal government has directed banks, government offices, and manufacturing companies to reopen on Monday, May 4.
Unveiling the guidelines for the gradual easing of the lockdown, the national coordinator of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Dr. Sani Aliyu, said the federal government had limited the total operational hours for all commercial banks nationwide, starting from Monday, to only six hours per day.
Aliyu said all banks would be allowed to operate only from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., together with other preventive measures in place, such as not having more than 20 persons in the banking halls, provision of hand sanitisers and measuring customers’ temperature.
“For government offices, government staff will be allowed to resume from the 4th of May, but it will be based on specific grade levels and specific days so that we can reduce the amount of congestion that we might have in our government offices and we will be discussing further with state governments to make sure that we have a common approach to this.
“Banks will be allowed to open but there will be a restriction in the opening hours to between 8am to 2pm and together with all the other preventive measures such as temperature check and maintaining of social distance,” he said.
In addition, he said pharmacy shops will remain open overnight while construction of critical bridges will be allowed.
