Sindh Minister for Information Nasir Hussain Shah on Saturday advised the federal government to focus on serving the people in distress instead of making baseless allegations against the Sindh government.
The provincial information minister said Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leaders cannot absolve themselves of their responsibilities by repeatedly criticizing the Sindh chief minister. He said the repeated statements by PTI spokespersons in which they are found trumpeting that the chief minister of Sindh is intimidating the people of Sindh over the pandemic are absurd and baseless. He said at a time when the whole country is facing pandemic like coronavirus, the federal government and its spokespersons should have followed the PPP and the Sindh government by putting their politics and point-scoring ‘in quarantine’.
The minister said that the entire focus of the federal government spokespersons is on defaming the Sindh government, instead of creating awareness among the people regarding the prevention against coronavirus. He said if the leaders of PTI, instead of wasting their energy on making noises all the time, use their energy to save the people from getting affected from coronavirus, it is possible that the country gets rid of the pandemic sooner. He said it is very unfortunate that the government has failed to formulate a national policy regarding preventing people from the pandemic. “If the federal government had acted prudently from day one, we would have formulated a national policy to curb the spread of the Coronavirus,” he said.
Shah said the irresponsible attitude of the federal government does not suggest that the country is facing a pandemic. He said that there are a lot of claims from the federal government that it had provided the Sindh government with a lot of medical equipment through the National Disaster Management Authority, but the fact is that not a single ventilator has been provided so far, nor any laboratory has been set up for testing Covid-19 patients. He said at present, the Sindh government has more than 280 ventilators for the seriously affected patients, while it has also imported 200 more ventilators on its own, out of which 100 are about to arrive very soon. He said there is currently a capacity of 1,200 beds for people infected with coronavirus, which is being increased to 2,000.
“It is true that we have an objection on the name of Tiger Force, and the Sindh government through chief secretary has issued instructions to all the deputy commissioners to facilitate the people affiliated with the Tiger Force in their respective districts,” he said, adding that the federal government and its ministers do not like the words of praise about the Sindh government by the media and the international community. He said that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said from day one that the Sindh government is willing to work with the federal government on every single issue regarding coronavirus.
The minister said that unfortunately the other side did not cooperate at all and our cooperation was also considered a joke. He said the lockdown had been extended till May 31, adding that it is incomprehensible that all these decisions had been changed so soon. He said at a time when there was an uproar all over the world regarding the coronavirus and people were scared, the Prime Minister called first meeting to discuss the issue on March 13, sixteen days after the first-ever case emerged. He said that the criticism for the sake of criticism on the Sindh government can be gauged from the fact that when a few UCs were closed in Karachi, a never-ending cycle of criticism began, while when the same thing was done in Punjab and KP, no one said anything at all. “Criticism for the sake of criticism must stop now and we must focus on stopping the spread of the coronavirus,” he said.
Nasir Shah further said that the criticism made against the Sindh health minister is baseless as she is discharging her responsibilities diligently. He said that the way the members of the business community as well as the general public violated the government’s announced guidelines, the Sindh government is in a quagmire regarding opening of other business sectors. He said if people continued to violate the guidelines in the same way, it would be impossible for the government to further relax the lockdown.
