Bilawal says provinces have little support from federal in fight against Coronavirus

ISLAMABAD: (UrduPoint/Pakistan Point News-April 11^th, 2020) Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto said that there was very little support from the Federal to provincial governments in fight against Coronavirus here on Saturday.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that Pakistan had a bottom up response to Coronavirus. He expressed these views while giving an interview to Sky tv.

“Provincial governments responded with very little support from federal government and we are still demanding the support to increase our health capacity,” he said.

He also said that the effect of both Coronavirus and lockdown was going to be serious on people in the country.

Bilawal said that they were in the opposition and were playing a very aggressive role as soon as Coronavirus reached Pakistan. The opposition, he said, put all differences aside and offered to work with the federal government. The PPP Chairman said that unfortunately the federal government was responding to the virus very slowly.

“Confusion and lack of coordination also affected action against global Coronavirus pandemic,” said Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, adding that it caused them problem as the country health care system came under great pressure.

“There is shortage of beds in Pakistan as there were only 0.6 beds per thousand people,” he said, adding that the European countries like Italy had 3.

4 and the UK had 2.8 but their health system came under huge pressure.

He emphasized over the great need of lockdowns in Pakistan besides tracking, locating and isolating the individuals suffering from this pandemic. He also stated that Coronavirus was a global pandemic which affected the entire world including Pakistan.

“India—our neighbor—one of the largest medicines producing country but is also led by a Hindu nationalist who antagonizes his neighbors. The state of Kashmir with Muslim population is in a lockdown for 250 days even before coronavirus. So there is that aspect of our concern about whether there will be an equitable response to pandemic at global level where we have poor and rich countries receiving what they need to save their citizens,” he added while criticizing Narendra Modi.

He went on to say that globally they had seen that in the past few years, the world moved from multilateralism to nationalism and especially at a time where there was a need to cooperate with each other. “We hope for a vaccine soon. We see that US has a president who has scoffed multilateralism, who has been engaged in trade wars and who has placed sanctions on countries like Iran that is already fighting the Coronavirus outbreak and where the sanctions are inhumane because it put people’s lives in danger,” he added.