ORDERS OF STATE OF EMERGENCY
The following is the genuine Orders of State of Emergency signed into law this evening contrary to the unofficial copy leaked to the Social Media without the Government of Samoa’s approval. Thank you for your understanding.
The Orders are as follows;
(1) that all (PRIVATE AND PUBLIC) Offices, Services, businesses and operations usually open to the public in Samoa, are to close from 7:00am – 5:00pm on Thursday 5th and Friday 6th December 2019 (“closure period”) with the following to apply:
(a) no vehicle is permitted on the road unless it is a vehicle belonging to an exempt service from the public sector or a vehicle being used to seek law enforcement or medical assistance; and
(b) inter-island travels between Upolu and Savaii are prohibited during the closure period, unless travel is for the purposes of the National Emergency Operation Centre (“NEOC”) or of seeking medical assistance or travelling overseas;
(c) all members of the public are asked and encouraged to remain at their places of residence to await the vaccination units being mobilized for the MMR vaccination plan;
(d) all members of the public that are vaccinated are encouraged to confirm the details of his or her name, date of birth, place of residence for entry onto the NEOC database (whether recorded manually or electronically);
(2) that the following are exempt services that are permitted to operate during the closure period in paragraph (1):
Public sector services
(a) hospital;
(b) morgue;
(c) fire and emergency services;
(d) search and rescue services;
(e) police services;
(f) security services;
(g) shipping services;
(h) civil aviation services;
(i) communication services;
(j) Samoa Water Authority services and the Electric Power Corporation services;
(k) National Emergency Operation Centre;
(l) Petrol stations used by Government;
Private sector services
(m) hotel and accommodation services;
Communication services;
(o) morgue; and
(3) that employees of exempt services in operation during the closure period are to be given permission by employers to attend where required to receiving the required MMR vaccination, and are to be paid the rate applied on a normal working day; and (4) that Government employees where appropriate are to be deployed as instructed under the National Emergency Operations Centre’s mass MMR vaccination plan to be held on 5th and 6th December 2019.
(5) in order to ensure records of vaccination and a review of final coverage, all individuals vaccinated will confirm their names, date of birth, village of residence, gender and confirm their date of vaccination. This will then be recorded by the mobile NEOC staff, manually and/or on the recorded online data collection form. (Those recorded manually at first will then be recorded later by the online data collection).