Sherpao wants national consensus on fight against coronavirus

PESHAWAR: Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) Chairman Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao on Saturday underlined the need for building a national consensus to help fight the coronavirus pandemic in the country.

According to a press release, he was addressing his party’s Central Executive Committee meeting through a video link.

Central General Secretary Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli, Senior Vice-Chairman Haji Mohammad Ghufran, Vice-Chairman Sardar Ahmad Nawaz, Vice-Chairman Zarar Butt, central Joint Secretary Hashim Raza Advocate, central Information Secretary Ahmad Nawaz Khan Jadoon, QWP Sindh chapter Chairman Qayyum Khan, QWP Balochistan chapter Chairman Samiullah Loni, QWP KP Chairman Sikandar Hayat Khan Sherpao, provincial General Secretary Hashim Babar, provincial Senior Vice-Chairman Tariq Ahmad Khan, Sarkar Abbas and Mohammad Jamil Advocate, members central executive committee, provincial Information Secretary Asad Afridi Advocate, provincial Vice-Chairman Adnan Wazir, QWP Sindh Vice-Chairman Naeem Ashraf Durrani, QWP Punjab chapter General Secretary Chaudhry Afzal and others participated in the meeting through the video link.

Aftab Sherpao urged the government take a lead and fight the Covid-19 pandemic from the front by taking all the stakeholders, including the opposition parties into confidence. He, however, said that the government lacked the vision and the ability to deal with this situation.

“This is a huge challenge and we have to fight it collectively by forging unity among our ranks,” he said, adding that blame-game and political point-scoring would create more problems.

He said that the government should evolve consensus at the national, provincial and district level by holding APCs in order to coordinate efforts to contain the spread of the virus.

He also underlined the need for launching awareness campaigns particularly in the rural areas to sensitize the people about the seriousness of this problem and remove the stigma attached with getting infected with coronavirus.

The QWP leader said the government must avoid playing politics over this issue and come up with a tangible strategy to provide relief to the people particularly the ones belonging to the poor strata of the society.

Making suggestions to the government to help mitigate the sufferings of the masses, Aftab Sherpao asked the rulers to lower the prices of the petroleum products and fix the same at Rs60 per litre to ensure the trickledown effect of the falling POL prices.

He maintained that the relief package announced by the government was not enough. He elaborated that the Rs3,000 was a meager amount and it should be raised to Rs15,000.

The QWP leader also suggested to the government to announce considerable cut in the utility bills as the lockdown and other measures had badly hit the people who were unable to pay the electricity and gas bills.

He said that the actual number of the coronavirus patients could be much higher provided the government conducted the tests in bulk to ascertain the real figures of the infected people.

He also urged the people not to shy about getting tested. “Social pressure is preventing the people from getting tested,” he remarked, adding that more and more tests should be undertaken so that the real situation could be assessed.

Rejecting the proposed creation of the ‘tiger force’, he said that the government should not politicize the distribution of the relief goods among the deserving people and should instead engage the local government representatives, polio workers, teachers and civil society organisations.

Aftab Sherpao said that his party would continue to identify the gaps in the government’s strategy so that it could better handle this situation. He clarified that they did not want to play politics over this issue and extended all-out support to the government in addressing this challenge. The meeting participants also suggested that the government should ensure the restoration of the 3G/4G internet services in the merged districts and allow international and national non-governmental organizations to execute projects for the benefit of the local people in the prevailing circumstances.

Paying tribute to the doctors and the medical staff for their services, the meeting urged the government to provide them personal protective equipment to save them from getting infected. The meeting also expressed concern over the rising prices of the essential food items, including wheat flour, ghee and sugar in the market.

The meeting participants also feared that if the government failed to ensure availability of the food items and the transparent distribution of the relief package, it would create law and order situation.

They demanded the release of Geo/Jang Group Editor-in-Chief Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman and condemned the efforts being made to stifle the press freedom.

They also expressed dissatisfaction over the performance of the Balochistan government as it did not take timely steps to contain the coronavirus spread and provide relief to the local population.