PPP’s gathering to commemorate Karsaz tragedy to be held under Covid SOPs, says Ghani

Sindh Information and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani has said that like the last year, due precautions will be observed this year again to provide protection against the coronavirus infection to the people who are going to attend the upcoming Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) public meeting in Karachi to commemorate the October 18 Karsaz bomb blasts.

Ghani, who is also the PPP Karachi president, said this on Sunday while talking to media persons as he went to the Bagh-e-Jinnah where preparations have been started for the public meeting that will be held on October 17, Sunday.

He announced that hundreds of thousands of masks and bottles of sanitisers would be distributed among the participants of the public meeting. He added that the seating arrangements of the public meeting would be made in a manner to ensure social distancing.

He maintained that the public meeting would prove to be a historical event in Karachi as activists and supporters of the PPP from all over Sindh would attend it.

A 120-foot wide and 50-foot high stage is being assembled for the event. Ghani said the traditional yearly public meeting of the PPP was being organised this year by the party’s Sindh chapter. He added that the same public meeting was organised under the aegis of the Pakistan Democratic Movement last year, but this year the PPP alone was organising the event.

The information minister told the media that special arrangements would be made to ensure minimal disturbance for the movement of vehicular traffic around the Bagh-e-Jinnah as vehicles from all over Sindh would bring activists of the party to attend the public gathering.

Special committees would be established to ensure parking of vehicles around the venue, he stated. Special enclosures would also be established to accommodate representatives of the print, electronic and social media who would come to cover the event, he added.

Ghani explained that the main reason why the event had been scheduled for October 17 this year instead of October 18 was due to fact that Rabiul Awwal 12 would start after the sunset on October 18.

The provincial minister also termed the death of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan a national tragedy, recalling that the architect of Pakistan’s nuclear programme had come to Pakistan at the invitation of PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to make the defence of the motherland impregnable.