THE Democratic Alliance has launched an urgent court bid challenging a national government decision to close Garden Route District beaches for the entire festive season.
Beaches in the district have been closed until January 3 next year.
The party said this regulation is also proving be the final nail in the coffin for the Garden Route’s coastal economies which are nearing total collapse.
“We had provided President Cyril Ramaphosa and Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma with an extended deadline of 10:00 this morning to provide reasons justifying the closure of beaches along the Western Cape’s Garden Route. Both the President and Minister Dlamini-Zuma have failed to respond by the extended hour,” the party’s leader John Steenhuisen said in a statement issued on Thursday.
“The fact that national government has requested additional time to prepare a response to our letter requesting reasons for the decision to close the Garden Route’s beaches, only demonstrates that there were none to begin with. It would seem that any reasons now provided would be ex post facto manufactured.”
Steenhuisen added that in the delicate fight to save both lives and livelihoods, ‘any job-killing COVID-19 regulation which has no rational basis in medical and scientific practice cannot be imposed.
“Doing so will only create a far more dangerous pandemic of widespread poverty and job losses, which we are already witnessing,” he said.
“Businesses in the hospitality industry along the Garden Route are already reporting devastating and life-threatening losses to the value of hundreds of millions of rands. This is precisely why we are urgently approaching the courts to expedite the overturning of this decision as the livelihoods of thousands currently hang in the balance.”
The DA said it expected that the case will be heard on Monday 21 December at 14:30.
(SOURCE: INSIDE POLITICS)
