The invisible frontline

Administrations across the world are facing the mammoth challenge of the Covid-19 outbreak. In Pakistan, where the number of infected people just crossed 11,000, the story is no different. All concerned departments – doctors, health officials, line departments, police, the army, etc – are trying their utmost to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.

The last few weeks have also reframed our understanding of who exactly does (or does not) constitute an essential worker. While the membership of medical and law enforcement professionals in this club was always understood, prolonged lockdowns have expanded it to include sanitary workers, everyone enabling goods supply chains (postal/ delivery workers, truck drivers, farm, factory, warehouse, retail workers), telecom professionals, journalists and media professionals, etc. Together, these are a lot of people that remain vulnerable for as long as this pandemic does not die down, who require personal protection equipment (PPE) of some kind. While the (initial) lack of PPE for medical professionals received wide coverage and is being addressed, many of the other essential workers serving alongside them are still without.

Specifically, the role of the police during a public health crisis like this one is vaguely defined. It is tasked to perform arduous tasks without consideration of its capacity and human resources. The general public was caught generally uninformed about what precautionary measures to take, while the police were equally unprepared and lacked standard operating procedures to follow during such an outbreak. Patients testing positive for Covid escaped from isolation facilities, and many international travellers either flaunted rules or went into hiding. Naturally, the job of tracking such people down and taking them back to isolation wards fell to the police. However, sometimes this job required the police, who are untrained for this situation, to go beyond the call of duty and establish quarantine areas and start Covid awareness drives.

During the course of doing their jobs, many police officers contracted the coronavirus while convincing people who were not ready to follow the instructions regarding lockdown. An example of this would be the recent cases of SP Operations Mardan and an SHO at Mangah. So far, about 16 policemen in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have tested positive, while another 15 policemen were reported infected in Sindh.

The police force was caught unprepared, without PPE, masks, or gloves, to deal with a situation that is without precedent in most people’s lifetimes. Like some medical professionals, they had to improvise and cobble together makeshift PPE. Nevertheless, with no other option, the police force remained at its job. The government promised resources for the purchase of PPE, but nothing has reached the police on duty to assuage their fears, yet.

After weeks and weeks, some members of the police force I talked to shared that there is no doubt that most officials working to curb the spread are wearing out, physically and mentally.

Their greatest fear is that they might take this virus home and infect their families, due to lack of protection and unsafe working environment. This fear is captured in one particular video that went viral of an SHO on duty at Mangah, in which he is seen pleading with people to stay at home by highlighting his own plight. He had not gone home to his family for days for fear of infecting his children.

On the flip side, we also saw a number of videos circulate during the early days of the lockdown in which law enforcement was seen meting out corporal punishment to members of the public for violating lockdown orders. The senior police command took notice of the issue and took quick and strict action against violators in their own ranks and issued SOPs for dealing with lockdown violations. Thereafter, many images of the police helping the destitute came to fore on the television and social media.

Meanwhile, contradictory statements coming from health officials, the prime minister, the chief ministers and the civil administration are further complicating the situation. It is sometimes days before these inconsistencies are resolved and frontline workers understand what their orders are.

When doctors in Quetta protested for their legitimate demand for PPE, the police contained them, without wearing as much as a facemask. When traders in Karachi broke the lockdown and attempted to reopen their businesses, it was the police that had to confront them, again. When mosque congregations, egged on by the religious establishment, broke lockdown rules it was up to the police to stop them, again.

In each instance, the evening talk-show debates centered around the demands of doctors/ traders /religious clerics, etc, but notably talked about the police men and women that stand on the other side.

When I tried to learn more about how law enforcement is coping with the situation, I could find very little reporting. The men and women of the police are fighting alongside medical professionals on the frontlines and doing their bit to push, pull and bend the infection curve downward. Yet, inexplicably, they have been rendered invisible.

The writer is an independent education researcher and consultant. She has a PhD in Education from Michigan State University.

Email: arazzaque@gmail.com