I'm not advocating for the government but if you are the government, do you have a plan for the current crisis? Crises caused by wars and pandemics both come so quickly and unexpectedly that no one is ready to respond in time. Even a great power like the US is not so well prepared, much less should blame poorer countries.
Increasing wages is only effective when a country's economy is growing well, in this case if goods increase due to inflation and the government increases wages so that people are comfortable spending it will make inflation harder to control. A country's economy isn't as simple as you might think, raising wages won't solve anything.
Well, when something super unexpected happens nobody is ready for it at all. It is not even just about pandemic, which is a global thing that happened 100 years ago last time, so it is normal to be not ready for something like that at all, it was totally out of the blue and even if you could get ready for it a lot better, most nations turned that into political stuff and didn't want to do what is required to be safer.
Like masks and vaccinations which would have helped people save themselves, was turned into political ideology, politicians who got the vaccination went to get votes from people who didn't just for more votes. Hence, being ready wasn't the issue, not being willing was.