SC must stop waste, embezzlement: APML

Unreasonable spending on insecticide alleged.

LAHORE: All Pakistan Muslim League spokesman Fawad Chaudhry has accused the provincial government of embezzlement and wastefulness in the insecticide spray campaigns against the dengue mosquito.

He was speaking at a press conference at the Punjab Secretariat on Sunday. Chaudhry called upon the Supreme Court to take suo moto notice of this ‘negligence’.

He also asked the Public Accounts Committee of the Punjab Assembly to seek details of a Federal Investigation Agency inquiry into the provincial government spray campaign that had allegedly been ineffective in killing dengue mosquitoes.

Chaudhry presented a ‘white paper’ to the media which he claimed highlighted how the provincial government had mishandled the virus and allowed it to spread throughout the province.

He said the provincial government claimed to have spent Rs1.75 billion on spray campaigns in Lahore only. He said according to experts the amount was enough to fumigate the entire South Asia region against dengue mosquitoes.

He said the fear spread by the dengue virus had resulted in the shutting down of schools and a large number of people migrating from the city. He added that the people visiting public hospitals for other problems were being ignored.

He said a woman had given birth to her child at the stairs of a public hospital because all beds were occupied by dengue patients.

Chaudhry said foreigners had stopped visiting the city owing to the threat of the fever. He called for an investigation to fix responsibility for the outbreak of the disease.

He said 216 people had died in the province from dengue fever but “no heads have rolled”.

He added that the killing of one man by Rangers officials had resulted in the sacking of the Rangers director general and the inspector general of Sindh police.

He said the first dengue fever case in General Pervez Musharraf’s government had been reported in 2003. He said owing to effective local governments and adoption of preventive measures recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the disease didn’t spread too far.

He said Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif was focusing only on the construction of Kalma Chowk at a time when preventive measures such as insecticide spraying should have been undertaken.

He said Health Department statistics on dengue fever cases were incorrect because they only mentioned public hospitals while private hospitals and clinics were providing medical treatment to more than 70 per cent people in the province.

Therefore, he said, the statistics were not accounting for majority of dengue fever cases.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2011.