The major opposition parties on Monday came down hard on the federal government for its handling of the country’s coronavirus crisis, calling its Covid-19 strategy ‘confused’.
As National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser is currently quarantined after testing positive for coronavirus, Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri presided over the session convened after a gap of nearly two months amid pandemic outbreak in the country. Prime Minister Imran Khan skipped the session while Leader of Opposition Shehbaz Sharif also did not turn up as his doctors, reportedly, advised him not to attend due to his medical history.
Addressing the session, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto criticised the federal government’s ‘inability’ to provide provinces with the help required to combat the pandemic. “The federal government should’ve stood with us shoulder to shoulder. We’re in the midst of a war, and the premier expects us to fight the war on our own?” he remarked, adding that borders are the responsibility of the federal government and, therefore, it should have ensured proper management of Pakistanis arriving from Iran through Taftan. “You couldn’t test them, you couldn’t quarantine them. I’m not saying it’s their fault. I’m saying it’s your fault,” he told the treasury benches. “Why wasn’t the Raiwind Ijtima stopped? Our Tableeghi brothers should’ve been informed [about the virus threat],” he further said.
Bilawal claimed that the federal government is distributing funds among the poor set aside for the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) under its Ehsaas programme. Referring to PPEs, he questioned whether the Centre wanted the provinces to fight the virus ‘without the weapons’.
Bilawal said Prime Minister Imran Khan should have proved that he is the prime minister of the entire country and ‘not just that of the PTI’.
PML-N’s Khawaja Asif said that a ‘complete lockdown’ at the outset would have gotten the country through the pandemic. “I accept the decision to ease the lockdown because factories aren’t operating and daily wagers are suffering. But if we had imposed a serious lockdown at the very start of the outbreak, then we would have been through with this crisis by now. Now when we need the lockdown the most, they are relaxing restrictions,” he said. Asif argued that PTV ended the broadcast after Foreign Minister Qureshi’s speech and private channels do not have access to a direct feed. The speaker responded that the matter was being investigated. He later added that PTV Parliament was broadcasting the entire session.
PML-N’s Ahsan Iqbal urged the National Assembly speaker to give a ruling on the fact that the speech by Kh Asif during the session hadn’t 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.
Addressing the NA at the start of the session, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that Pakistan is ‘ahead of other South Asian countries’ in terms of handling the coronavirus crisis. Commenting on the influx of Zaireen flooding the country at the start of the outbreak, Qureshi said, “Iran pushed 4,000-5,000 Pakistanis into Balochistan despite Islamabad’s request to wait until a quarantine facility was developed. But they were Pakistanis, we cannot disown them, we had to own them,” he said. “I laud the Balochistan government who did their best [to provide facilities] despite scarce resources.”
The foreign minister also lauded the performance of Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, stating that he had no qualms about giving credit where it was due. “But even with Shah’s tireless efforts, an effective lockdown could not be imposed in Sindh. It was enforced in areas such as DHA and Clifton but not in Lyari.”
Concluding his speech, he assured the opposition parties that all of their arguments regarding the country’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak would be heard during the session.
Minister for Industries Hammad Azhar said hunger is as much a threat to Pakistan as the coronavirus itself. Defending the government’s lockdown strategy, he said, “All developing nations are under ‘smart’ lockdowns. All these countries, including us, are making decisions based on data and data alone. Ours is not a western developed country where people can sit at home and eat. We have to balance hunger and poverty with the virus.”
Federal Minister for Communications Murad Saeed took the opposition to task in his speech during the NA session, saying that they [opposition] demanded the imposition of a lockdown in the country instead of providing any real solutions to tackle the coronavirus crisis. “You didn’t give us a solution, you just shouted ‘lockdown! lockdown!’,” he said, adding that Imran Khan has been saying from day one that people’s livelihoods and lives must be saved.