Options for employees

Dear Sir,

Many companies are busy streamlining their operations, with some even reducing their workforce, because of the economic situation brought about by low energy prices, which have affected many oil-producing countries like Qatar. Companies and authorities have the right to take appropriate decisions to safeguard their economical interests, true.  But I feel staff reduction should be the last option of any cost-reduction process.
If at all being done, employees should be given an option to accept a revised offer or contract. Also, workers who have been let go may be given an opportunity to find another job in Qatar.
These options will give all parties the flexibility to decide their future and also will allow the state to retain experienced staff, rather than bringing in replacements and training new hands.

Johnson Thomas, (e-mail address supplied)

A major medical threat

Dear Sir,

The Zika virus, discovered in Brazil, is a serious medical threat. The virus had migrated from Brazil to many other countries, especially in Latin America. Scientists are striving to find a vaccine to contain the Zika outbreak. It is evident that deadly diseases could travel at supersonic speed around the globe.
Of roughly 400 emerging infectious diseases that have been identified since 1940, more than 60% have originated from animals.
Poverty has forced people in many developing countries to eating vermin, rodents and insects. It is a sad state of affairs but undoubtedly this will trigger the next global pandemic. The most devastating epidemics we are aware of have been incubated in chickens, ducks, pigs, horses, camels and bats. And of course, mosquitoes.
Are we about to be pulverised by an Armageddon virus? The Spanish flu pandemic originated from a wild aquatic bird.
Professor John Oxford, from the University of London, a world authority on epidemics, warns that we must expect an animal-originated pandemic to strike the world within the next five years, with potentially cataclysmic effects on the human race. Before it even has a name, it will have started to cut its lethal swathe through the world’s population. The World Health Organisation will be caught flat footed.

Farouk Araie, [email protected]

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