PM Imran asks Sindh governor to take up Covid-19 unemployment issue with CM Murad

Prime Minister Imran Khan has asked Sindh Governor Imran Ismail to take up unemployment issue due to Covid-19 lockdown with Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah.

"While distributing PM Relief Fund in Larkana, I found a large no [number] of unemployed were Chaabrri-wallahs [vendors] whom police had stopped from working. I have asked Gov Sindh to take this up with the CM as these poor people do not violate social distancing and their families survival depends on their daily income," the premier wrote on his official Twitter handle.

He said that the number of people applying for relief in Sindh was higher compared to the population of the province.

"The poverty and those unemployed because of Covid-19 in Sindh is far greater proportionally than in other provinces, according to the applications received by my PM Relief Fund," PM Imran said.

He added that 32 per cent of all applicants were from Sindh whereas the population of the provinces comprises around 22 per cent of Pakistan population.


Earlier, during a press conference in Karachi, PM Imran had also criticised Sindh government's approach in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic.

PM Imran asks party's MPAs in Sindh to be proactive, resolve public issues

He said that CM Murad says that Sindh has developed consensus with the federal government but Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari says the polar opposite in his press conferences.

"How would Bilawal Bhutto Zardari know anything about how citizens cram into a single room in shantytowns during a lockdown...it isn't like living in the Bilawal House, I assure you."

He said that the situation had started to take an ugly turn as people began to attack the vehicles carrying edible items. "Look at the situation in India. They imposed a harsh lockdown but the people died due to hunger as well as the lockdown."

"Forty per cent of the population of Karachi lives in katchi abadis. We're a poor country. We cannot afford such a harsh lockdown... we have to save people from both hunger and coronavirus," he added.