A lawmaker said Sunday he has lodged a lawsuit against the government for its “poor” initial response to curb the spread of the MERS virus in the first such case in the country.
Moon Jeong-gu, a lawyer of the Seoul-based law firm Ahn & Chang, said he filed the suit with the Seoul Administrative Court on Friday, claiming that the government failed to carry out its duty of protecting the people by belatedly providing information on hospitals where MERS patients stayed.
South Korea is currently battling with the outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, which has killed 25 people while 169 cases have been confirmed — the largest outbreak of the disease outside Saudi Arabia.
“The government has a duty to ensure the people’s rights to be cautious by revealing a list of hospitals where MERS patients stayed and to provide detailed information on other places visited by them,” the lawyer said.
But the government had kept the information a secret for 19 days after the first case was confirmed, exposing the people to the danger of infection, he claimed.
“This lawsuit is not intended to seek any compensation from the state but to have the judicial branch confirm that the government failed to properly deal with the outbreak at the initial stage and leave this as a national record,” Moon said.
The move came after Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn apologized for the government’s belated response.
“I feel sorry as a newly-appointed prime minister for the insufficiency in the government’s initial response, which is directly related to public safety,” Hwang told lawmakers in an interpellation session on Friday. (Yonhap)
