Bilawal says Sindh takes lead in number of Covid recoveries

ISLAMABAD: The PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Friday said Sindh has taken the lead in the number of recoveries from coronavirus.

“The number of patients having defeated the virus in Sindh is 46,824 — a figure which makes up 46 percent of the total recoveries of 100,000 across the country,” Bilawal said in a tweet.

Through anther tweet, Bilawal said the PTI’s Federal Board of Revenue’s failure cost Sindh Rs229 billion and Punjab Rs483billion. “The Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) has collected Rs105.9 billion in revenue during the 2019-20 fiscal year -- a growth of 5.6 percent. “This achievement made despite the general economic slowdown and the coronavirus pandemic,” he tweeted.

Meanwhile, Bilawal in a meeting with representatives of Young Doctors Association from different parts of the country said Prime Minister Imran Khan did not hold even a single meeting with the doctors for their recommendations on the pandemic.

The video-link meeting was attended by doctors from Punjab, Sindh, KP, Balochistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. Doctors from Larkana attended the meeting on special invitation.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, President PPP Punjab Qamar Zaman Kaira, General Secretary Punjab Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed, Syed Hasan Murtaza, Sohail Anwar Sial, Chaudhry Latif Akbar and Jamil Soomro also attended the meeting. Doctors briefed Bilawal about health sector issues in their respective provinces and areas.

The doctors thanked Sindh government for providing risk allowance to the doctors and demanded risk allowance for doctors all over the country.

Meanwhile, the PPP rejected the government plan to run PIA’s Roosevelt Hotel in New York under a joint venture with the private sector.

“Firstly the timing is totally wrong for such an exercise. Real estate prices have gone down by a third in New York. Therefore, any form of disinvestment, or sale, or mixed ownership, call it joint venture or privatisation when our state assets have lost their value is ill-advised,” said the PPP Secretary Information Dr Nafisa Shah while giving the policy statement of the PPP.

Secondly, Nafisa Shah asked, what is the objective of the joint venture? It is unlikely that profits will increase with COVID-19 crisis in the world. “In our view this suspicious, untimely and ill-advised move will compromise PIA’s ownership of the hotel without accruing any benefits to the state,” she said.

Meanwhile, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that the PTI government had left the people of Punjab at the mercy of coronavirus and locusts. Addressing a PPP Punjab Parliamentary meeting through a video link, he asked party MPAs from Punjab to speed up a mass contact campaign. He said the PPP had the capability of addressing the grievances of the people of Punjab.

He said that a cut in Rs483 billion from the share of Punjab by the PTI government was not acceptable to the PPP. Meanwhile, Bilawal also expressed profound grief over the loss of lives in the van-train accident in Farooqabad.