LAHORE: The patients and their attendants at the Lahore General Hospital have expressed displeasure at the frequent VIP visitors who come there to inquire about PML-N leader Javed Hashmi’s health.
Talking to The Express Tribune, several people said that the hospital wards and the areas around them wear a barren look whenever some VIP is to visit Mr Hashmi, “It’s as if a curfew has been imposed in the area,” Sohail Saeed, a patient’s son, said. He said that no one was allowed to leave the wards or move around in the hospital whenever a VIP visit was expected. “We cannot even go out to buy medicines,” he added.
Hashmi is under treatment at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Lahore General Hospital (LGH). He was flown in from Multan after suffering brain haemorrhage on July 20.
Government officials and party leaders, including Prime Minister Yosaf Raza Gilani, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Ahsan Iqbal and Siddiqul Farooq, have since been visiting the hospital to inquire about his health. The hospital is sealed during the VIPs’ arrival and departure and no one is allowed to enter or leave the premises.
“My father is under treatment at the hospital. Whenever someone comes to see Mr Hashmi, it seems as if we have been confined in a jail,” Saeed said. Abdul Rasheed, a patient, said that people had become accustomed to city roads being blocked due to VIP movement, “getting locked up in a hospital is the latest. I have seen ambulances stuck in traffic jams due to VIP movement. Now I am witnessing patients and their relatives being detained in hospitals to make the VIPs secure.”
“If our leaders feel so insecure, they better stay away from politics,” he said.
Interestingly, doctors too are instructed to stay in their rooms whenever a VIP arrives in the hospital. A doctor requesting anonymity told The Express Tribune that they were instructed to halt their movement during the period the VIPs remained at the hospital. The hospital administration is helpless in the current situation, he said. It has no option but to acquiesce to the VIPs’ demand for security and stop people from entering or leaving the wards, the doctor remarked.
The security for the VIPs is not limited to the hospital premises, the surrounding areas also become a ‘no-go zone’ and are closed for any kind of movement during the visits. Residents complained that the roads leading to the hospital are cordoned off, causing severe traffic jams. “Such steps can only promote hatred among the people against the government officials and political leaders,” Khurram Anees, a resident of the area, remarked.
He said that residents and businessmen in the area could not leave their houses or shops because roads remained closed. “The residents mostly turn to streets and adjacent roads but they remain packed with traffic and it wastes a lot of time.”
Published in The Express Tribune, July 29th, 2010.
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