Govt confused, indecisive on lockdown, says Rana Sanaullah

LAHORE:Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) Punjab president Rana Sanaullah has said the PTI government announced the lockdown without any planning, strategy or preparation.

“It remained confused and indecisive on lockdown and made a mess of it, failing miserably to implement it,” he said in a statement here on Wednesday. The former Punjab Law minister said that PTI could not achieve anything from the lockdown period due to its incompetence, lack of vision, inaction and now the people are no longer willing to abide by the government's meaningless half-baked lockdown.

He said that Sindh government was imposing a lockdown while the federal government was delivering speeches against the measure and then in its traditional manner PTI took a U-turn and announced the lockdown out of nowhere, he said.

Sanaullah said the government could not do even the basics of a lockdown right which included increasing testing to massive levels. He said the government should have conducted at least 25 thousand tests everyday while imposing an airtight lockdown. They should have used this valuable time to identify, quarantine and separate, infected and suspect individuals from the healthy ones, decreased the load on the overwhelmed healthcare system. After achieving this separation over two to three week lockdown, a stage wise resumption of businesses should have followed, he said.

But now, he said, it is too late because the temperament of the financially crippled and frustrated people has changed and they won't sit home any longer. There is a significant chance that people would violate the partial lockdown by the government and small businesses and shopkeepers would resume work with or without government approval. He said it is also feared that spontaneous protests might break out against government policies.

Sanaullah suspected that people won't abide by the restrictions for more than a couple of weeks at max because the fear of starving their children to death has taken over their fear of death by coronavirus.

The government's only wasted time due to its incompetence and inaction. This is what PMLN had been warning Imran Khan over and over again. Had Imran created an environment of national unity, had announced the lockdown with the opposition by his side, the results would have been 100 percent, he said.

The government also totally failed to reach those worst hit by the economic fallout of the lockdown and failed to deliver food and essential items to them. Around 55 percent of the country's workforce comprises of daily-wagers, he said and added only 2 to 6 percent can survive a 6 month stay-at-home restriction.