The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government on Thursday urged the Pakistan People's Party's provincial government in Sindh to mobilise the Prime Minister's Corona Relief Tiger Force (CRTF) in the province to facilitate the local administration, carrying out relief and rescue activities in their respective areas during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Youth Affairs Usman Dar during a press conference appealed to Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah to take decision regarding the utilization of the registered CRTF members in the fight against the COVID-19.
Some 154,000 registered members of the tiger force have been awaiting the coordination of the Sindh government and their commissioners and deputy commissioners to formally start the [relief] work, Usman said, urging the CM Sindh for taking up the matter instantly.
He said the CRTF had been launched in Sialkot recently, which had started working in their respective areas.
The registered members from Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan would soon start working in their respective districts.
Usman said around one million people had registered themselves for the CRTF that included a whooping number of professionals.
Doctors, engineers, lawyers, retired army personnel and others had joined the tiger force with great enthusiasm.
Giving break up, he said more than 300,000 students, 133,000 social workers, 50,000 doctors, 40,000 teachers and 17, 000 health workers had registered themselves on the PCP to render their volunteer services for the country in the wake of coronavirus.
First of all, we are going to place those registered members in the field, which are associated with medical profession, he announced.
Prime Minister Imran Khan would address the CRTF members in the coming days, he informed the media persons.
Usman said they would be given Personal Protective Equipment and 40-minute training to the registered members to ensure their safety in the field.
He said five major responsibilities had been allocated to the tiger force members that included ration distribution, implementation of 20-point guidelines introduced by the government for prayers during Ramzan, awareness creation against coronavirus and others.
Citing the example of Sailkot, he said the district police officer had deployed three volunteers of tiger force at every mosque to ensure implementation of the standard operating procedures.
Some 9,000 volunteers would assist the district police in implementing the SOPs at 3,000 mosques of Sialkot, he added.
The special assistant said some 4,370 Utility Stores and over 1,000 franchises were functional across the country.
The Tiger Force would help maintain social distancing among the buyers at those places, he added.
He said the Tiger Force would also inform the local administrations about the stock availability of those items on which the government had given subsidy of billions of rupees.
To a query, he said the identity card would be issued to the tiger force members through QR code to avert the chances of duplicity.
Membership for the CRTF would be cancelled on violation of the set Terms of Reference.
The special assistant expressed his gratitude for the people, who have shown keenness in supporting the government's relief efforts across the country.
He pointed out that a notification, containing the Terms of References (ToRs) for the tiger force, had been forwarded to the chief secretaries and secretaries to the chief ministers and governors of all the provinces.