Failing to provide preventive clothing to health workers is criminal.
LAHORE: It is in times of crisis and rare pandemics like COVID-19 that there is a true test for leaderships and institutions because the fate of the rest relies on how they react during such times. Unfortunately, glaring inadequacies in the health sector stand exposed and even the PM has accepted it in his address to the nation. Lack of capacity to handle challenges stands exposed. Failing to provide preventive clothing to health workers is criminal.
COVID-19 struck China and other developed countries in Europe. The world has witnessed how the Chinese leadership took up this challenge head on. Social isolation of suspected cases and quarantine followed with medical checkups having been carried out and today China has managed to contain this pandemic without there being a cure or vaccine for it. It has all been about managing and containing the spread. Yet despite all of this being known by those at the helm, thousands of pilgrims that returned from Iran and Iraq and they were not quarantined and hundreds managed to leave either through negligence or intervention.
There is no doubt that Pakistan has limited fiscal space but it is time that the state must accept that its priorities are lopsided. Why should the state be captive to the needs of a few? Despite our financial constraints, select services offer subsidised houses, extravagant pension emoluments and even bullet proof expensive vehicles for performing services which they are paid for. Billions could be raised if the state had sold expensive real estate instead of allotting multiple plots to the few.
Malik Tariq Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, March 19th, 2020.
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