Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Shibli Faraz on Sunday said that those who lamented the COVID-19 policy of the Prime Minister Imran Khan should at least praise him after it has succeeded in balancing between the health concerns and economic activities.
“Even at that time the elite in the country tried to do politics over the issue and called for complete lockdown without keeping in view the situation faced by the poor segments of the society,” he said while taking a jibe at the opposition parties.
Shibli Faraz said that Imran Khan was not deterred despite criticism and reiterated his calls to balance between the pandemic measures and economic activity.
“There are countries now who are eyeing to follow the model of Pakistan to cope up with the COVID-19 situation,” he said and asked the opposition leaders to be ashamed over politicizing the matter rather than praising the prime minister’s efforts.
He said that the prime minister launched Ehsaas programme to provide relief to the masses during the pandemic and 13.1 million people availed from the facility.
Divulging other efforts to tackle virus outbreak in the country, he said that they even did not have details of beds in the country at the beginning and established NCOC to improve coordination with the provinces.
He said that Allah helped them in tackling the COVID-19, followed by praise-worthy inputs from doctors, police, paramedics and other frontline workers.
It was due to our consistent policies and by the grace of Allah that we are able to achieve these successes, he said and further lauded the untiring efforts of Dr. Faisal from Shaukat Khanum Hospital and SAPM Tania Aidrus.
Shibli Faraz said the COVID-19 situation was far threatening than a war-like situation and if it was not tackled properly, it could have led to a civil war-like situation.
“Food shortage is a far more dangerous situation than war,” he said.
