Heading towards crisis, minister warns Sindh Assembly

Opposition points to govt’s failure to utilise Rs144b health budget

KARACHI: As the opposition lambasted the Sindh government’s performance amid the Covid-19 crisis, provincial health minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho warned in the Sindh Assembly that the pandemic was heading to the point where each household in the province may end up suffering from the virus.

Briefing the session chaired by assembly speaker Agha Siraj Durrani, she criticised the federal government. “The Centre’s insistence on ending the lockdown and the violation of standard operating procedures means we are now on our way to a crisis. Hospital beds will be full and ventilators will be occupied,” she claimed.

“What can we do when the prime minister does not wear a face mask and tells people to fight coronavirus and not be afraid of it?” she asked, adding that the federal government had made a mockery of the pandemic. Insisting that a lockdown was the only solution, she argued that human lives were more precious than the economy.

According to Dr Pechuho, the health department had formed rapid response teams to oversee the situation at the district level. “We are also conducting training of medical personnel with the help of Aga Khan University,” she said, adding that the government was trying to boost patient capacity as well.

‘Deprived of facilities’

Opposition members, though, insisted that despite the allocation of billions of rupees for healthcare, the province’s people had been left to suffer, deprived of even basic facilities in government hospitals.

“There isn’t a single ventilator in Larkana, the hometown of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leadership,” lashed out Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf parliamentary leader Haleem Adil Sheikh. “And instead of providing rations, the Sindh government has given bhaashan [speeches]. Can an empty stomach be filled with bhaashan? The people need daal, roti and chawal for survival.”

Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) MPA Shaharyar Mahar, too, drew the house’s attention to the Rs144 billion health budget. “Had the government utilised just 25 per cent of this, we would not be facing such poor conditions in the health sector,” he argued, adding that instead of comparing themselves to other provinces, Sindh’s ministers should focus on delivering in their own province.

Referring to PPP leaders turning to private hospitals for their own treatment, GDA’s Nusrat Seher Abbasi asked, “Why has the Sindh government failed to establish a single hospital where the PPP co-chairperson, its ministers and its MNAs can avail treatment? The government deprives its own public hospitals of basic facilities but pumps large amounts of money into private hospitals in the name of Covid-19 tests.”

Criticising the government’s “discriminatory policies,” she pointed out that the poor who lost their loved ones in the pandemic could not even attend their funerals, but thousands were allowed to gather for the funeral of PPP minister Ghulam Murtaza Baloch, who lost his life to Covid-19 on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, MQM’s Khawaja Izharul Hassan said that his party had initially supported the lockdown, standing by the Sindh government in its efforts to deal with the contagion, but the latter had completely failed to come up with a functional policy.

A matter of language

There was uproar in the house when Abbasi lashed out at the health minister for delivering her speech in English.

“Who can understand English in Sindh? This house is summoned to brief the people of Sindh of the pandemic and the government’s initiatives. The minister’s English is being telecast and people are watching, but they cannot understand it,” she said.

Dr Pechuho retorted by calling the MPA a “stupid woman,” leading to shouts of “shame, shame” by the opposition members.

Calling the house to order, Durrani expunged the non-parliamentary words from the proceedings, and Dr Pechuho resumed her speech in Urdu.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 5^th, 2020.