PESHAWAR: The provincial government is yet to impose complete lockdown in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but the challenge it is facing right now is to keep people away from social gatherings, especially religious events.
The excessive awareness campaigns in the mainstream as well as social media have helped reduce the big rush on roads and in the markets. The partial lockdown announced by the authorities in the province has also given encouraging results. However, a lot is still to be done to combat the pandemic in the province in an effective manner.
Generally the social gatherings have been discouraged and functions like wedding ceremonies in the provincial metropolis and elsewhere in the province have even been stopped by force. But the major challenge is to check religious gatherings in the Pakhtun society in which the majority of the people are devout believers.
The main religious gatherings that have continued unabated in the province are congregational prayers at mosques, funeral prayers, Tableeghis’ congregations on Shab-e-Jumma (Friday night) and Shab-e-Itwar (Sunday night). The government and key religious leaders from different schools of thought have already asked the people to offer prayers at homes, but still the faithful proudly visit mosques for congregational prayers without adopting any preventive measures.
Funeral prayers are another big challenge. Huge rush can be seen at funerals, more so in the rural parts of the province. A cleric in a heavily attended funeral was heard asking people to stay away from big gatherings and prefer staying homes. But he himself had come to the funeral from a distant village along with dozens of his followers and was addressing the gathering of not less than thousands of people in Mazdoorabad locality of Takht Bhai town in Mardan district.
It may be mentioned that Mardan in the worst affected district of the province as six cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Manga village of the district. Another suspect from the same village was admitted at the isolation ward of the District Headquarters Hospital in Mardan on Monday.
The most vulnerable to the coronavirus are the elderly people, but they are the hardest to be kept indoor. “I have been trying to convince my father not to go to funerals but to no avail. His only reply is don’t get scared, seek help from Allah,” said one Fazle Raheem. Two days ago he went to a village some 50 kilometres away from his house to attend the funeral of his friend’s wife. On return, he was rather mentioning his journey as his credit and was saying that people from across the province were there to attend the funeral. He was not ready to listen to the argument that actually the gathering of people from different parts of the province at one place was not good, Fazle Raheem added.
The third major challenge is the Tableeghi missions and their gatherings on the two specific nights every week. One can see groups of these missionaries, mostly the elderly, roaming in every locality without any check.
They are also regular in holding big gatherings on Friday and Sunday nights in the name of Shab-e-Jumma and Shab-e-Itwar having a huge potential risk of spreading the disease.
Complaints to the district administration against these religious gatherings have been falling on deaf ears. “I sent a number of complaints to the district administration to take action against these missionaries as they are not ready to listen to any argument. But no action has been taken so far to thwart these gatherings,” said Mohammad Zubair.
The need to ban Tableeghi missions and gatherings has increased after six cases of coronavirus were declared positive among these missionaries following tests in Islamabad on Monday.
At a time when the government has announced public holidays and imposed partial lockdown to close markets and shopping malls except hospitals, grocery and medicine stores, stern action is required to be taken to force people to stay home. Even at homes the principle of social distancing is required to be adopted as in this province most of the people live in large joint families. It is like a social gathering when all the inmates are home.
