Hazara residents finally receive Sehat Insaf cards
PHOTO: FILE
Residents of the Hazara Division on Tuesday finally started receiving cards for the universal health insurance plan of the provincial government, the Sehat Insaf Card.
The cards were given out to residents of Abbottabad by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Assembly Speaker Mushtaq Ghani on Tuesday in a ceremony.
Ghani said that through the card, around six million residents of the region will be able to avail health facilities from the best hospitals of the country for up to a million rupees for free, noting that the middle and lower middle-class segments of the population will be the main beneficiaries of the programme.
He added that the cards were being distributed on Tuesday in the Zone-II regions, which include the Shangla, Buner, Kohistan, Mansehra, Abbottabad, Battagram and Torghar districts.
Ghani further said that the incumbent government does not care what the opposition says, either against them or against their projects such as the health insurance scheme, the Billion Tree Tsunami (BTT) tree plantation project or the Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) in Peshawar. He asserted that under BTT, over a billion trees had been planted in the province while the BRT was providing quality local transport at a cheap price. Further, the prime minister’s Panahgah (shelter) programme for the homeless and the Langar Khanas helped the destitute and now the government has taken up the responsibility of providing medical treatment to the masses.
Criticizing the opposition parties, particularly their grand alliance under the banner of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) and their large public gatherings, he reiterated the government’s refrain that it had helped spread the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) throughout the country.
Advisor to the K-P Chief Minister on Information Kamran Bangash said that the card is another election promise which the incumbent Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has fulfilled.
He continued that they are fighting the corrupt of the country and that in K-P, their reforms have all but removed opposition parties in the provincial assembly.
K-P Health Minister Taimour Jhagra claimed that even those sitting across the aisle in the assembly have appreciated their health card system.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 2nd, 2020.