ISLAMABAD - Chairman Senate Standing Committee on Interior Senator Rehman Malik Thursday demanded of the government to impose countrywide curfew to prevent further spread of COVID-19 as mere lockdown is not the solution.
“The lockdown doesn’t ensure complete disconnection of the people but it’s only the curfew that can produce the desired results,” said the PPP lawmaker in a statement.
Senator Malik said that the outbreak of coronavirus was an issue of national security and no one should do politics and blame-game over it.
Senator Rehman Malik predicted that the situation would be worse in the coming weeks if further necessary preventive measures weren’t taken.
“We need to disconnect and isolate the coronavirus infected people from healthy people but just lockdown is not a solution to the problem,” he said.
The PPP senator reminded that as chairman, he had convened an emergency meeting of the interior committee on February 27 to advise the government to take timely preventive measures against the potential spread of coronavirus.
“I had urged the government to prepare a comprehensive National Action Plan against coronavirus and take timely preventive and remedial measures.”
He said that the government was cautioned that the coronavirus could spread in Pakistan after its outbreak in China and Iran. The committee had issued instructions for setting up screening test and isolation centers at all the airports and other entry points besides suggesting that that every passenger should be tested and quarantined upon entering the country, he added.
Senator Rehman Malik said that the interior committee had prepared a 30-point plan containing preventive measures and had sent it to the federal and provincial governments to implement it to control pandemic in the first phase before it spread countrywide. He also said that the situation would have been different and far better today, had the government taken timely action against the spread of disease soon after its outbreak in two neighbouring countries and had followed the committee’s suggestions.
Senator Malik said that he actually had proposed to the government to hand over the designated civil hospitals to the Army Medical Corps. “A senior PPP colleague opposed and questioned why I have asked army for help,” he said adding that his response was that he had neither called for the imposition of martial law nor asked the Indian Army for help but the own Army Medical Corps to assist civil hospitals to combat this deadly disease collectively. He thanked Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa for extending full support to the civil hospitals.