KARACHI - Sindh Minister for Information, Local Government, Housing and Town Planning, Religious Affairs, Forest and Wildlife Syed Nasir Hussain Shah has said that the Sindh government was constantly trying to somehow prevent the spread of the coronavirus and save the lives of the people of the province.
But on the other hand various spokespersons of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) were constantly trying to distract the Sindh government through baseless political statements and blames.
Provincial Information Minister said that Prime Minister Imran Khan should educate his spokespersons that at a time when the entire country was facing pandemic in the form of coronavirus, they should behave sensibly.
He said that the leaders of PTI should serve their people during this difficult time, rather than playing baseless blame game.
Syed Nasir Hussain Shah further said that the fact of the matter was that the leaders of PTI were not ready to accept that how people around the world were praising Chief Minister Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah and Sindh Government as a whole, the way it had dealt with the situation emerged after the spreading of coronavirus so far.
Nasir Shah said that we wanted to work and serve our people and these people were trying to turn our attention to other useless things.
He said that the Sindh Government had always been in favour of a proper
lockdown, adding that, it could only be possible if the federal government fully supported the Sindh government.
He said that the Sindh Government was under a lot of pressure from the businessmen and other shopkeepers, but he said that the Sindh government could only fully assure them of its support when it got the support from the federal government. He said that whatever the Sindh government could do it would do for its businessmen shopkeepers and especially the daily wagers, but because the federal government had more resources, it should become a helping hand to make things easier.
He said that the federal government should provide interest-free loans to the small shopkeepers and businessmen.
Talking about lockdown, the Minister said that every country in which the coronavirus cases had been reported went for strict lockdown first, adding that only through strict lockdown, these countries could successfully control the spreading of coronavirus.
He said that lockdown affected more than 200 countries, including China, Italy, Spain, USA and India, was much tougher than ours.
Shah said that Sindh government was formulating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) under which businessmen had to work until we got rid of the pandemic.
Nasir said that the Sindh government had neither went for lockdown in the province willingly, nor it was in support of extending it further, but he said that in difficult situations difficult decisions had to be made.
“It’s more important to make people’s lives safer,” he said, adding that the economy and business could recover later.