Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Monday informed the National Assembly that the country has the highest coronavirus testing capacity of 20,000 tests per day to date among all South Asian countries.
While opening debate in the National Assembly on the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, he said that health experts around the world were trying their level best to come up with strategies to curb the virus till a vaccine is invented.
He said the coronavirus has spread in 209 countries, adding no country around the world was seen fully prepared to battle out the virus, and the world is learning with the passage of time.
The foreign minister took strong exception to the Pakistan People's Party's (PPP's) allegations to roll back the 18th Amendment, saying "our thinking has become limited...the PPP used to talk about a strong federation but now it gives the smell of provincial prejudice. At this time Pakistan needed national unity and no [use of] Sindh card. "
He said that since the virus emerged, Pakistan had eight operational labs but now the country has about 70 functional labs for the coronavirus.
"With improved testing capacity, we will get a clearer picture of the pandemic in the country," he added.
Speaking about Pakistan's healthcare system, he said it was "dissolved in 2010" and that the PML-N and the PPP were previously responsible for the sector, adding political parties had earlier mutually decided to make decisions regarding the coronavirus lockdown in the National Coordination Committee's (NCC's) sessions.
He said the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) led by Planning Minister Asad Umar and NCC bodies met daily to monitor the coronavirus situation and response across Pakistan and to obtain updates from the provinces.
Federal Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar said that four to six million people have become jobless due to lockdown in the country.
He said that 900,000 small industries would be shut down permanently if we do not relax the ongoing lockdown.
He said the decision of lockdown has been taken with the consensus of the provinces.
He said that the government has taken the decision of smart lockdown to control further unemployment in the country. He said all developed countries are going towards smart lockdown to stop unemployment.
He said that seven million families have reduced their food items.
He said the PTI government had announced a Rs1,200 billion package to provide relief to people.
He said that the government has given relief of three months in payment of electricity bills to 90 per cent commercial and 80 percent industrial consumers. He said the PTI government has also given loans at interest rate of three percent to small private institution to pay salaries to their staff.
"We have also reduced the price of petroleum and diesel," he said.
PPP chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari lambasted the PTI-led federal government for doing politicks over the coronavirus pandemic but reiterated his offer to work together and put aside differences for the betterment of the Pakistani people. Addressing the first NA session after its suspension owing to the coronavirus pandemic, Bilawal noted at the start of his speech that Prime Minister Imran Khan was not present during the NA session.
The current government expected the labourers and underprivileged groups "to put their lives in danger to earn their livelihoods and work in the industries - and the constructions sector - to run our economy".
Bilawal said the participants were expecting a debate on national unity and the steps to spread awareness about the coronavirus pandemic.
"Unfortunately, the foreign minister - who was assigned the task - chose to target Sindh and the 18th Amendment."
Acknowledging FM Qureshi's remarks on better testing capacity, he said: "I agree with that there has been an improvement in the testing capacity. India and Bangladesh cannot compete with our testing capacity.
"But the credit goes to provincial governments. In Sindh, we have bumped up our testing capacity the most, from 80 tests per day on the first day to more than 5,000 a day. That's a 600 percent increase!"
Bilawal added that National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairperson Lt Gen Muhammad Afzal had set a 50,000-test target by himself.
"Meanwhile, we haven't been able to reach that point so far because the Centre is not supporting us in a way that it should and the damage is not limited to provinces," he said.
The Centre, he added, should have stood strong with the provinces and worked with them.
If the provinces spent Re1, the federal government should have spent Rs2 but that did not happen, he noted.
"We can only request the Centre to play its part as the country's government."
Bilawal also underscored that while after 18th Amendment and the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, the provinces were allocated funds, their annual health budgets were not enough to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Taking the floor, Khawaja Asif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) said that the government should have gone for a "complete lockdown" at the start of the pandemic, which could have proved beneficial.
"The decision to ease the lockdown is correct as factories had been facing closure due to which daily wagers were suffering...but again if we could have opted for a lockdown at the very beginning of the outbreak, we could have overcome the crisis by now. Now when we need the lockdown the most, they are relaxing restrictions," he added. He also criticised the government's 'inability' to increase testing capacity, saying two weeks ago we were told that our testing capacity would be increased to 50,000, but now we are being informed that it is only 20,000. "We have undertaken approximately 0.2 million tests for a population of 220 million. The figures that are coming forth, we - and others in the country - think that the figures are being suppressed," he claimed.
Comparing Sindh's response to the outbreak and that of the federal government, he said that the province has been taking all the necessary measures to control the outbreak.
He said that the Sindh government is taking all the steps possible to protect our people, adding it is not an easy job as Karachi is the biggest city and has an abundance of slums, but at least they are trying their level best.
"What Sindh has been doing [to stem the virus], the federal government has no strategy. What is their lockdown strategy and what is a smart lockdown? May be I'm a bit naïve as I've failed to understand all this," he said. He also claimed that all the medical facilities all over Punjab where COVID-19 tests are being undertaken, were established during the PML-N's tenure, adding if we ruled Punjab for 10 years, the PTI has been in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa for seven years, but even then the party had nothing to its credit.
Asif also raised the issue of a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers battling the coronavirus outbreak. He said the medics are our heroes and we pay tribute to their services. "They [medics] are like soldiers fighting a vicious battle. But have we provided them with adequate weapons? I'm sure no," he lamented.
The PML-N leader also criticised the prime minister for "confusing" the nation through contradictory statements, and said: "We've become fed up as he [prime minister] is not showing leadership and the only thing we see is confusion."
The PML-N's Ahsan Iqbal urged the National Assembly speaker to give a ruling on the fact that the speech by Asif during the session had not been aired on television.
"Today is a very important session. This is a national challenge and it is the government's responsibility to also show the opposition's speeches," he said. "I would like to request the chair to give a ruling regarding this as PTV is a state-run institution," he added.
The Minister for Communications, Murad Saeed, came down hard on Sindh government over lack of facilities at public hospitals in the province, saying mere rhetoric would not work as the provincial government has miserably failed to stem the deadly disease. Responding to Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari's fiery speech in the National Assembly, he said that Sindh was given over Rs550 billion for health during the last eight years but its hospitals are still deprived of surgical equipments, machines other facilities.
He maintained that people were dying even from dog bites amid shortage of anti-rabies vaccine (ARV) and inadequate facilities at hospitals in the province.
He said that a smear campaign has been launched against a news channel for asking question about lack of health facilities in the province.
Saeed said that the entire world was all praise for Prime Minister Imran Khan for launching country's biggest ever Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme worth Rs144 billion to mitigate the sufferings of the poor amid coronavirus lockdown.
He urged the Sindh government to provide potable water to people in Thar and focus on improving governance.
Comments
Comments are closed.