‘Awareness, education of people against coronavirus need of the hour’

Islamabad : Federal Minister for Inter-Provincial Coordination Dr Fehmida Mirza has said that more communication, awareness and education of people to enable them contain themselves from coronavirus is the need of hour.

Dr Mirza was speaking from her office at a Virtual Roundtable meeting on, ‘Responses to Coronavirus pandemic in Pakistan’ organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute here Thursday. The Roundtable was addressed by experts from their offices online in view of the COVID-19 situation prevailing in the city.

Dr Mirza said that the government is making all-out efforts to fight the challenge of Coronavirus. She observed that the country is already under socio-economic stress like poverty, unemployment, unhygienic conditions, drinking water shortages, so ultimately the people will be the sufferers. The minister emphasised the need to bring civil-military leadership on one page and work together with provinces setting aside their political affiliations. She said cooperative federalism is necessary at this moment, but unfortunately local governments are missing and we lack effective ways to access the poor and vulnerable communities.

SDPI Executive Director Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri said that the government is devising policies to tackle this pandemic and require doable policy inputs at this stage so that best practices could be adopted.

He said the government should extract funds from different institutions like Workers Welfare Fund, PSDP etc. to use them in this situation of catastrophe. He identified three major issues that how we can make IPC and CCI more effective, how can we make our health distribution system impactful and how can we make our Social safety nets (except from Ehsaas or BISP) useful in current situation.

Liquidity injection is needed for two groups: those falling in poverty band and those small firms having to pay their bills and salaries, he said adding that the government can easily do it as oil prices are being reduced in international market and it will have the cushion.

He called for method of provision of tele-medicine as some people (having other ailments than Coronavirus) are not going to hospital fearing they night catch corona virus

He said that in case of death, virus is not dead and China has developed some SOPs to bury the dead bodies which of course Muslims cannot follow. So, we need to work as how we can do it in Pakistan.

Economic Expert Dr Naveed Iftikhar said more important is that how we can protect our daily wagers, street vendors and the poor unemployed labour.

Shahjahan Chaudhry, Director, National Incubation Centre, Karachi, said that international projects are being unfolded due to coronavirus, and payments are slow which would ultimately affect salaried class and bills. After 3 to 6 months, small businesses would have been more impacted, he said, adding that 50% vulnerable people (out of 20%) would not be able to recover, so liquidity injection should be the top priority of the government. He said the virus spread is increasing day by day. He said a wider vision from Federal Government is needed as to how we can tackle the disease in next three months.

He said food ration distribution can be done with volunteers and other private partners.

SDPI Joint Executive Director Dr Vaqar Ahmed stressed the need to learn lessons from Wuhan and these lessons should be applied in worst case scenario. He stressed the need to call CCI meeting immediately to send good signals.

SDPI Director Communication Moazzam Bhatti said only a visionary leadership like Nelson Mandela can save the country and nation from this pandemic. Maryam Shabbir from SDPI said All Sunni Conference being held on March 21 in Lahore should be called off.

Saleem Khilji, Dr Sajid Amin, Qasim Shah, Ayesha Qaisrani and Mobeen Ali Khan from SDPI and economic journalist Ariba Shahid also spoke on the occasion.