Concerns spreading among the general public over the increasing impact of anti-COVID measures upon our freedoms may be in part the reason authorities have rolled out the soliciting of suggestions. It’s, in short, in case they have missed something obvious.
While the whole city has made concerted efforts to support and cooperate with the various COVID-prevention measures in place during this time, it also just makes plain sense for the government to listen to its people.
The initiative, which was the top-trending story on Nanjing Daily this afternoon, 18 April, is entitled “Listen to Talk; Solicit Good Public Suggestion – Golden Anti-epidemic Ideas” (“听语：征集市民好建议——抗疫’金点子’”).
Responsible for its creation are the Nanjing Internet Culture Association (NICA; 南京市网络文化协会), together with a new municipal-level think tank; the Nanjing Government Affairs Public Sentiment Research Institute (NGAPSRI; 南京政务舆情研究院).
There are three options for submitting your suggestions:
- By telephone hotline: 025-84686006
- By email: njtingyu@163.com
- By scanning the QR code above, whereupon you shall be taken to a page requesting the following information: Name; mobile phone number; occupation; suggestion category; suggestion title; and suggestion content.
By and large, it is hoped suggestions will focus on four aspects of epidemic prevention and control; emergency implementation, normalised management, coordinating economic and social development, and other kinds of suggestions.
These are the choices presented as to “suggestion category” above.
The NICA and NGAPSRI shall collate the suggestions submitted to make subsequent report to the Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government for their decision-making reference.
So what would you suggest? Fewer nucleic-acid tests, to make self testing the default, or perhaps to do away with the concept of a test result valid for just 48 hours when it takes up to 24 hours to get the result in the first place? One thing is for sure; a lone individual voice is unlikely to be heard. But if we banded together and hundreds of us hand in the same suggestion, then we might really get somewhere…
