MQM-P announces campaign to battle coronavirus

KARACHI: On the 38th foundation day of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), leaders of the Pakistan faction of the party on Wednesday announced that they had suspended all their mass activities in the wake of the coronavirus threat and were instead launching a campaign to help the efforts to prevent the pandemic from spreading in Karachi.

The MQM-P convener and former federal minister, Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, along with heads of the city and its districts’ municipalities and members of the party’s Coordination Committee spoke to a press conference at the party’s secretariat in Bahadurabad, in which they said the party was suspending its activities and shutting down its offices for a week.

Dr Siddiqui asked the party workers to play their role in helping control the coronavirus outbreak, spread awareness, and provide care to the vulnerable people. MQM-P senior leaders Aamir Khan, Kunwar Naveed Jamil and Faisal Subzwari, Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar, and chairmen of District Municipal Corporations belonging to the MQM-P also accompanied him.

The MQM-P convener also announced that the MNAs, MPAs and local government representatives of the party would donate their one-month salary to the party’s funds formed for coping with the coronavirus outbreak. He said the party would distribute 100,000 sanitisers among the residents.

He said despite the ban on funds of the Khidmat-e-Khalq Foundation, the party’s charity arm, camps for primary screening for coronavirus diagnoses had been organised. The MQM-P will provide rations to the family of affected people if the situation becomes worst, said Dr Siddiqui.

He said the MQM-P’s political and local government leadership had started taking part in efforts against the pandemic. “Our local government leaders have limited resources but despite it, we are now in the ground to play our role in the combat against coronavirus,” the MQM-P convener said.

Dr Siddiqui said that 1,580 rooms in 208 buildings available to the city’s municipality were to be used in the fight against coronavirus.

He also directed all of the party’s union committee chairmen to distribute sanitisers and soaps among the residents. The MQM-P leader asked the public to take precautionary measures and not to panic. “Prevention is better than cure,” he said.