CM concedes his govt couldn’t effectively utilise Rs500m corona emergency fund

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has conceded that the Rs500 million fund established by his government last year after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic could not be used in the manner they had originally envisioned to help out the affected people.

He stated this on Wednesday at the University of Karachi where he had gone to inaugurate an COMSTECH-ICCBS exhibition at the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences. The CM said technology in the present era carried solutions to problems in every sector, whether it was the field of banking or health. He said the latest technology of artificial intelligence was also being used in surgical operations.

He said technology which had been merely taught in classrooms 30 years back had become a reality in the present era. Shah said the first patient of the coronavirus had died in the province on March 18, 2020, and later technology had helped out his government a lot in making key decisions against the spread of Covid-19. He said several decisions of his government against the coronavirus had become unpopular, but later on they had given good results.

The CM said that up to 20,000 coronavirus tests were being conducted daily in Sindh, and earlier conducting 1,000 such pathological tests a day was an impossible task. “It is technology which has provided solutions to all these problems.”

The CM said the coronavirus emergency had affected many businesses all over the world, but later people started online businesses. “We now hold online meetings and this also shows the success of the technology,” he said.

He said the public-private partnership mode was the best way to do progress in the areas of technology and education. He said technology had played an important role in the health sector. Shah said the media couldn’t perform its desired function of keeping the people informed.