Prioritising wealth over health in a pandemic

LAHORE: Coronavirus is basically a health issue, but for the first time in human history a health problem is taxing the economic wellbeing of the entire world. Developed economies have put the economy on the backburner, but we are more worried about it.

There is a broad consensus that the world economy would not be the same once this pandemic is controlled. For the first time, a disease has not distinguished between the poor and rich.

It has attacked prime ministers, crown prices, parliamentarians, businessmen, artists and the poorest of the poor with the same intensity. The attack has come at a time when the developed economies were moving towards high skills, and poor economies were upgrading their technology and human resource.

The virus is not differentiating between a highly skilled or unskilled person. Of over 100,000 deaths recorded because of coronavirus, so far 80 percent occurred in countries having highly skilled human resource.

So the world at large is giving priority to its human resources rather than the economy. Most of the global leaders know that by minimising the damage to their human resource they would be able to restructure their economy after some time.

In Pakistan, our rulers are in a state of denial. They are not on one page. To preserve our human resource, we need a complete lockdown, but we are prolonging the agony of our people tacitly allowing people to move about freely.

Look at India; they have closed the entire country for 21 days. The World Bank estimates that as a result of this move its economy would suffer badly and would hardly post a GDP growth of 2 to 2.8 percent. They have taken a decision to preserve the population instead of the economy. Modi has become unpopular, but he is stubbornly defending his stance. In fact, what India is doing is in line with what the developed economies are doing.

We on the other hand are giving more preference to the economy than the human race. Cursory look at the package announced by this government would make it clear.

Out of $1.2 trillion allocated to fight this menace only Rs144 billion has been reserved for the poor. The state has tried to gain political mileage even in this tragedy by including the amount earmarked for routine yearly wheat procurement in this package.

For the businessmen it has announced all those incentives that they were demanding since this government came into power. One fails to understand as to what advantage these incentives would provide to the businesses when the entire world is closed.

While the businesses are shedding jobs this government has filled the coffers of many businesses by providing them even those refunds that were pending for years. The reason given for withholding the refunds pre-pandemic was that the government was short of resources; as if the government is flooded with money after the pandemic when refunds were made.

Many of these funds could have waited and priority should have been given to human resource. When our prime minister says that the United States has earmarked $2.2 trillion for its public to tackle the pandemic, he should also go through the details as to how would it be utilised.

This fund is for the people. This fund would provide them adequate resources to offset the loss of jobs or lowering of income.

This fund would ensure best healthcare for the victims of coronavirus. We should compare the usage of our $8 million package and see as to what percentage would be used for welfare of the people compared with the amount being given for the welfare of the businesses.

We must look after our human resource. Giving amnesty at this juncture is a greater sin than amnesty in normal times. Those who have hidden wealth should be asked to surrender it voluntarily.

The government could allow them to use the ill-gotten wealth for the welfare of the people in distress through the government or recognised non-government organisations. But to allow the businesses to invest that illegally acquired money at this juncture is shameful.

It reflects negatively on the character of this nation. How can a person with character use black money for profitable purposes when majority of population is starving?

In fact, this is the time to withdraw all tax exemption to generate revenues for the welfare of the people. The rich should bear in mind that this virus is blind and can hit anyone including them and in case of fatality the wealth would be of no use to them.