Pakistan Asks Canada To Reconsider Suspension Of Flights

(@fidahassanain)

Pakistan asks Canada to reconsider suspension of flights

Pakistan High Commissioner to Canada Raza Bashir Tarar has written a letter to Canadian Minister for Transport Omar Alghabra, saying that Pakistan has managed the pandemic.

ISLAMABAD: (UrduPoint/Pakistan Point News-April 24th, 2021) Pakistan has asked Canadian government for reconsidering its decision of suspending all passenger flights from Islamabad for 30 days.

In a letter to Canadian Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra, Pakistan High Commissioner to Canada Raza Bashir Tarar drew attention to the fact that Pakistan, like all other countries, had been facing epidemic but it had managed it well due to its strategy of smart lockdowns.

He assured the minister that Pakistan’s testing mechanism is very robust and Pakistan International Airlines only accepted results from the best laboratories and matched them with barcode on every result sheet.

Canada put temporarily ban on all passengers flights from Dehli and Lahore amid fear of COVID-19 on Friday.

The authorities took this decision, citing increased cases of Coronavirus detected at arrival from these countries.

The travel ban was imposed for 30 days for Pakistan and India.

Alghabra said: “I’m suspending all commercial and private passenger flights arriving in Canada from India and Pakistan for 30 days due to increased cases detected in passengers at their arrival here,”. He explained: “It’s temporary as appropriate measures will be taken to control increase cases of COVID-19,”.

The temporary travel will come into effect at 11: 30 pm Eastern Time Thursday [0330 GMT Friday].

The cargo services, however, will not be suspended for uninterrupted shipment of vaccines, personal protective equipment and other essential goods.

Canadian authorities suspended flights from Britain due to COVID-19 variant last December.

Fida Hussnain

Fida Hussnain is a lahore based journalist. He writes on politics, religion, social issues and climate change. He is also a research fellow at University of Gujrat.