Corona Relief Tiger Force has no task to perform at present

ISLAMABAD: The Corona Relief Tiger Force (CRTF), comprising volunteers belonging to the PTI, which was introduced by the ruling party last year, is out of job, out of action.

“For now, the CRTF has no national level assignment, no work to do,” special assistant to the prime minister on youth affairs Usman Dar, who spearheads the force, told The News.

He said the CRTF members were however keeping a close liaison with the deputy commissioners and assistant commissioners of their respective areas to render any kind of assistance to the administration. Since there are no lockdowns necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the CRTF members have no duty to perform on voluntary basis; Usman Dar said and added that as the weather would improve, they would be used again in different activities.

He said since these volunteers were linked with a portal, they could be asked to perform certain tasks within no time. They are available to do any assignment quickly. When the CRTF was launched, it attracted widespread criticism from the PTI’s political rivals and other circles as the force lacked any legal backing. It is not known to have done any substantial work. It is just a political arm of the PTI, which has with it the cell numbers of a large number of its cardholders, who can be approached to do a job allocated by the party.

Rather than having notable work to its credit, certain CRTF volunteers had even fuelled controversies in different areas by meddling in the administrative affairs. Its constitution did not go beyond a mere political slogan. As its nomenclature connotes, the force was pioneered to help authorities in the coronavirus pandemic and ensure implementation of the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) aimed at reducing the spread of the disease. But it was never defined how it will do all this as this job is done by the bureaucratic apparatus as per the law.

Additionally, it has no power to interfere in the administrative work. While the second wave of the COVID-19 has been devastating Pakistan over the past few months, claiming several deaths and many fresh infections every day, the CRTF is nowhere to be seen. No government leader makes even a slight mention of the force while it was launched with fanfare.

Sometime after its formation, Prime Minister Imran Khan tasked the “one million-strong” CRTF volunteers with checking prices of food items and posting them on his portal. He wanted the force to regularly check prices of pulses, wheat flour, sugar and cooking oil in their localities. Even if the CRTF did so, it has been unable to do anything meaningful. As the force remained “operational”, the prices of daily commodities kept skyrocketing. Especially, the price of sugar continues to be uncontrollable. It used to sell at Rs55/kg during the tenure of the previous government. But it has shot up to more than Rs100/kg. The government got the shortages of sugar and wheat inquired by a committee. Since then, the prime minister has held umpteen meetings to bring down the prices of these commodities but in vain. The multiple stringent actions launched by different government agencies on the basis of the reports of the inquiry committee against the sugar barons have left a negative impact on the price situation. Even heavy imports of sugar and wheat have not helped scale down the prices. As per the government’s claim, the CRTF was created in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, the provinces ruled by the PTI and its allies. It has no presence in Sindh. The Sindh government had announced shortly after the CRTF was constituted that it would not allow the force to operate in its province because it has nothing to perform, and that it can’t permit interference of political workers in the job of the administrative machinery.

Regardless of the CRTF’s performance in specific fields it was assigned to work, it is expected to help the PTI in the local elections whenever these will be held. The primary purpose of having these volunteers was to become a force in every area for the PTI to show its mettle in any electoral exercise.