ISLAMABAD: In fresh relaxations in virus curbs, the government had decided to reopen tourism industry and also expedite the repatriation of stranded overseas Pakistanis by allowing home quarantine, announced Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday, as he said all the industries, except for high risk ones in ‘negative list’, would be allowed to work to facilitate the poor masses.
The decisions come as the nationwide coronavirus cases surpass 74,000 with nearly 1,600 deaths.In a televised address to the nation after chairing a meeting of the National Coordination Committee (NCC) here, the Prime Minister once again emphasised the need for public self-discipline to slow down the spread of the contagion through adopting standard operating procedures (SOPs) in letter and spirit.
The Prime Minister, reiterating his opposition to complete lockdowns, said he was not in the favour of stringent curbs from the day one as the voiceless poor segments were the hardest hit by such measures taken by the provinces. He said lockdowns were not a solution to Covid-19 as restrictions were only meant to slow down the spread of the virus to minimise pressure on hospitals. He said what he wanted was to strike a balance between health safety steps and economy.
“Pakistan’s situation is different than that in China or Europe,” he said, noting he had earlier informed the nation that 25 per cent of the country’s population was below the poverty line, which “means that nearly 50 million people in our country do not eat two full meals a day”.
“After doing calculations, we figured out that there are 25 million people who are daily wagers and who get paid weekly and whose households had to remain hungry if they did not earn for one day,” he added, saying those families comprised 12-15 million people in total. The labourers and daily-wagers, he added, were part of the informal, unregistered economy.
“A lockdown is different for different people in Pakistan as well. There are people who live in palaces and there are those who live in slums — their approaches to the lockdown were different.
“Some 30-35 per cent people in Karachi live in katchi abadis [slums]. What effect would the lockdown have had on them? On the one hand, we had the wealthy elite, whose attitude was completely different and who were demanding lockdown because there was a lockdown in Europe.”
Khan urged the people to learn to live with the virus as it was not going anywhere until the emergence of a vaccine. He referred to the US where, he said, even after 100,000 deaths and big stimulus package, they were going to reboot the economy and other western countries were also going to lift curbs. He also referred to India’s mishandling of coronavirus crisis and its adverse impact on the poor.
The Prime Minister said even if the government continued to keep people indoors, there was no guarantee, the virus would not resurge. He said South Korea and Singapore were again seeing an increase in the cases. He said if people ignored government’s guidelines, they would make their own loss. The government, he added, would be forced to close those specific areas where there would be high number of virus cases which would in turn result in business losses.
While allaying the fears of the health officials and acknowledging their services during the coronavirus crisis, Khan said the government had the realisation of their concerns.
About the repatriation of stranded Pakistanis, he said the government had decided to test them for Covid-19 on return and let them go home, adding if any test came positive the person would be asked to self-quarantine at home. He said through those measures the government would be able to bring back large number of expatriates by increasing flights. “I want overseas Pakistanis — especially labourers stranded in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and some others in Europe — to know that we are discussing how to bring them back.
“Nearly 80-90 per cent cases were imported and we closed off the airspace due to such circumstances. We have decided to bring Pakistanis back. We will test them and those who test positive will be asked to self-isolate at homes.”
He said the government was continuously increasing capacity in hospitals for Covid-19 patients, adding currently more than 50 per cent ventilators and beds in intensive care were available in the country. He said: “Those with diabetes, blood pressure, and the elderly face a risk from the virus. If we implement the SOPs, we can save their lives as well. We are bringing a programme with which people can get to know about where the ventilators are available,” he said.
Khan mentioned the government had prepared a ‘negative list’ of sectors that would remain shut down but “we have opened everything else”. The list, he added, “will be shared later in the day as a debate is being held over the resumption of tourism”.
“Several places only earn in three to four months of summers and if we do not open the tourism [industry], people will be adversely affected due to no income,” the Premier said, noting the governments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan were mulling over it.
