Daily Times

Committed to its newly discovered passion last week, the Punjab government seized more than 10,000 pounds of meat throughout the province, an action that most folks, including myself, admire as a step towards improved governance in the largest province of the country. The captured merchandise did not only include the meat of dead and sick animals or that kept under poor hygienic conditions, it also included the flesh of pigs, horses and donkeys, animals that Islam does not permit Muslims to consume under any circumstances except when the believers are at risk of dying from starvation.
With the strict implementation of the law regarding the handling of nutriments and through its well managed media campaign, Mian Shahbaz Sharif wants to reassure the people about how much he cares about the health of every individual and how honest he wants his small business owners to be when it comes to the well being of the citizens. Amazed right, with the sudden surge in the care message? Me too; I was surprised when I saw Ayesha Mumtaz, the director general of operations of the Punjab Food Authority (PFA), emerge out of nowhere and take on the most influential families in Lahore, the owners of restaurants who have known the Sharif brothers for decades. Do you think raiding the restaurant in the Avari Hotel is easy? Think again! It is like walking through a landmine or maybe harder. Realising that, I tried to understand the reason behinds these raids, which continue with the same spirit even today. I wanted to know what had prompted the Chief Minister (CM) to implement those rules now when they have been around for years and what the motive behind the publicity was. Is it a media stunt or is he trying to go after someone in particular, a personal vendetta? But, so far, I must admit it has been one of the government’s best-kept secrets.
At a quick look, it seems that the problem with the poor quality of food served in the restaurants or the unhygienic meat sold to the consumers in local stores has just gone out of control recently, spreading to every district, acquiring the form of a pandemic like the mosquito borne dengue fever that incapacitated the whole province a few years ago. The infectious process could only be contained by taking radical steps on an urgent basis and by getting the help of an expert team from Sri Lanka, a successful endeavour led by Shahbaz Sharif that saved thousands of lives. Similarly, the illegal practice of selling contaminated meat, it appears, would have endangered the lives of hundreds of people, if he had not zoomed in on it and had not declared a statewide administrative priority.
But, is it a real emergency? That is the question that haunts me. Give or take a few months, Shahbaz Sharif has been enjoying power for the last eight years now. Is the quality of meat any different now than in 2009 when he was sworn in? Was he not aware of the practices of restaurant owners then? To be honest, and as far as I can tell, the quality is almost the same; it has not gotten any worse. What has he been doing all those years except either building expensive projects to benefit very few like the Daanish schools? Or diverting the budget from health and education to pay for cosmetic undertakings like the Metro Bus Service in Lahore and Rawalpindi? Let me also ask this as a side-note: who gets paid at the cost of our health and education? It is not Pakistani companies.
Looking at it from another angle, we all know two facts about Pakistan. First, its population is increasing at an alarming speed. We will cross the 300 million mark by 2050 with the current population growth rate of 1.49 percent. Second, there is a trend towards urban migration of people from the rural areas. Knowing that, one can easily discern that Lahore or any other big city in Punjab has expanded in the last eight years. It also means that each metropolitan area needs more hospitals and health facilities than before and will continue to need more. So, can you tell me how many hospital projects Shahabaz Sharif has launched in his eight-year tenure? To be honest, I have not heard of any. Now the question is: what would have been better for the people? More doctors, more hospitals, more nursing care, more rehab facilities, more medicines, more physical therapists and social workers or more roads, bridges and more incomplete highways, projects that ultimately fail even if they appear to be successful in the beginning?
I can understand these new health facilities can cost a lot of money. The bill for such an undertaking can rise up to billions of rupees. What this means to me is that we need to improve existing structures and expand their potential. However, their condition has worsened over the years. Have you been to the Jinnah Hospital in Lahore lately? Can you call it a hospital for human beings? It is a place where you want to die, not get better. Would Shahbaz Sharif or any of his family members like to be treated in that facility? I am sure we all know the answer to that.
In the absence of any of the hardcore measures needed to improve the healthcare standards of the people, the raids on restaurants and meat shops are, in my opinion, an inexpensive way to get cheap publicity and a short lived surge in popularity, a gimmick to delude people. Perhaps it is a trick that will pay off in the upcoming local body elections in which the PTI will be a formidable opponent, a challenger that can upend the last three decades of hegemony of the PML-N in Punjab. All that notwithstanding, I appreciate the raids while they last. We can at least enjoy a few days of clean food in restaurants.

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com