Thursday, March 26, 2020
سینیٹر کرشنا کولہی نے پوری تنخواہ وزیراعلیٰ فنڈ میں جمع کرادی
پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کی سینیٹر کرشنا کولہی نے اپنی ایک مہینے کی تنخواہ کورونا وائرس کے حوالے سے قائم کیے گئے فنڈ میں جمع کرا دی ہے۔
ترجمان وزیراعلیٰ سندھ کے مطابق تھرپارکر سے تعلق رکھنے والی سینیٹر محترمہ کرشنا کولہی نے 165000 کا چیک وزیراعلیٰ سندھ کو بھیج دیا۔
واضح رہے کہ وزیراعلیٰ سندھ سید مراد علی شاہ نے کورونا وائرس کے خلاف جنگ کے لیے یہ فنڈ قائم کیا ہے تاکہ مریضوں کے علاج کے ساتھ ساتھ مسحقین کی مدد کی جاسکے۔
مزدوروں کو دہلیز پر راشن پہنچایا جائے، بلاول
پیپلز پارٹی کے چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا ہے کہ سندھ حکومت ایک ایک مزدور کے گھر پہنچے اور یومیہ اجرت کمانے والوں کے گھروں کی دہلیز پر راشن پہنچایا جائے۔
بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے یومیہ اجرت کمانے والے افراد کے رابطے کے حوالے سے ہیلپ لائن بنانے کی بھی ہدایت کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ پاکستان پیپلزپارٹی کی بنیاد ہی روٹی کپڑا اور مکان کا نعرہ ہے۔
انہوں نے کہا کہ میں عوام سے ہوں اور عوام مجھ سے ہیں، ایسے کڑے وقت میں ہم کسی کو تنہا نہیں چھوڑیں گے۔
چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے ہدایت کی کہ سندھ کے کسی مزدور کے گھر میں فاقے نہیں ہونے چاہئیں۔
انہوں نے کہا کہ یومیہ اجرت کمانے والے پریشان نہ ہوں، پاکستان پیپلزپارٹی آپ کے ساتھ ہے۔
پیپلز پارٹی کے چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری کی سر براہی میں یومیہ اجرت کمانے والے افرا د کی امداد کے میکنزم کے حوالے سے ویڈیو لنک اجلاس ہوا، جس میں وزیراعلی سندھ سید مراد علی شاہ، سینیٹر شیری رحمٰن، نیر بخاری، سید نوید قمر اور سلیم مانڈوی والا شریک ہوئے، جبکہ اجلاس میں تاج حیدر، وقار مہدی، امتیاز شیخ اور مرتضیٰ وہاب سمیت دیگر بھی موجود تھے۔
کورونا وائرس کا شکار ہونے والے پی پی پی کراچی کے صدر سعید غنی نے بھی ویڈیو لنک اجلاس میں شرکت کی۔
سند ھ حکومت نے چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری اور پی پی پی قیادت کو ضرورت مندوں کی مدد کیلئے اپنی منصوبہ بندی سے آگاہ کیا۔ چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے یومیہ اجرت کمانے والے افراد کیلئے سندھ کے ہر ضلع کے ڈی سی کو پہلے فیز میں دو کروڑ روپوں کے اجراء پر اظہار اطمینان کیا۔
انہوں نے ہدایت کی کہ پہلے فیز کے تحت یومیہ اجرت کمانے والوں کو راشن کی تقسیم فی الفور شروع کی جائے۔
بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے یومیہ اجرت کمانے والے افراد کی مدد کیلئے دوسرے فیز پر سندھ حکومت کی بریفنگ بھی لی اور سندھ کے زکوٰۃ مستحقین کے حوالے سے بھی استفسار کیا جس کے جواب میں انہیں بتایا گیا کہ ایک لاکھ زکوٰۃ مستحقین کو ان کے اکاؤنٹس میں پیسے منتقل کردئیے گئے ہیں۔
Opinion - How #Pakistan Became a #Coronavirus Super-spreader to the Entire Muslim World
Iran banned congregational prayer. Saudi Arabia closed the Ka’aba to pilgrims. Imran Khan allowed a quarter of a million Muslims to gather - and returning home, they've spread the coronavirus from Kyrgyzstan to Gaza.
On Sunday, the Gaza strip reported its first two cases of coronavirus. The two Palestinian men had recently returned from Pakistan.
They were among the 250,000 people that gathered in Lahore two weeks ago, to participate in the Tableeghi Ijtema [literally "a congregation for outreach"] – an Islamic event organized by the local Tableeghi Jamaat [Outreach Congress].
An offshoot of the South Asian Deobandi Islamic movement, the Tableeghi Jamaat has spent the past century preaching Islam in the region, and now has a presence in over 80 countries. The Raiwind area in Lahore, the capital of the Punjab province and home to 11 million inhabitants, hosts the annual Tableeghi Ijtema, which includes hundreds of thousands of participants from around the world.
This year, with the congregation set for March 11-15, there had been calls to postpone the event, given the spread of COVID-19. By the end of February, Pakistan had already reported its first coronavirus cases. On the eve of the ijtema the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a pandemic.
Where Iran had cancelled the weekly Friday prayers and Saudi Arabia had suspended the Umrah pilgrimage by the end of February, the Pakistani government was still dillydallying over forestalling a gathering of over a quarter of a million people in the country’s second most populous city.
On March 12, the organizers were asked to disband the congregation, but only after around 250,000 people had already assembled in camps in preparation for the event. The reason cited for the closure of the event wasn’t the fact that world is in the midst of a pandemic which will completely change the global order – it was "rainy weather."
The Tableeghi Jamaat’s reluctance to cite an infectious virus as cause for the disbandment is rooted in its regressive ideology, whose exponents have ranged from militant jihadists to radical preachers to Islamic televangelists unleashing a perilous blend of unscientific fantasies and bigoted fallacies. For these ideologues, cancelling congregational prayers owing to an infectious disease is synonymous with repudiating Allah’s command.
While regressive religionists across divides exhibit dangerous disregard for global calls for social distancing, what is rarer is for a state to continue to kowtow to the clergies, when their precarious abandonment of logic can have fatal ramifications for the entire country.
And yet, at a time when Iran has shut down the holiest Shia sites, Saudi Arabia has banned prayers at mosques – including the two holiest in Islam – and numerous Muslim countries like Turkey, UAE, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, among others have closed mosques, Pakistan allowed the Friday prayers on March 20, nationwide.
The closest the Pakistani government came to even suggesting that the prayer is better off being performed at home, was the tweet of President Arif Alvi, who revealed that he had prayed at home. President Alvi shared a quote of the Prophet Muhammad and ended his tweet with the expression astaghfirullah [literally, "I seek forgiveness from Allah."]
The message of the president, which sought to justify the abandonment of congregation through Islamic scriptures – something that many others have vied to do as well – placed religious dogma over the state’s basic governance responsibilities at the time of a pandemic. Seeking "forgiveness" for the "sin" of praying at home on Fridays only reinforces the menacingly prevalent idea of the coronavirus being a divine test that requires collective prayer.
Little wonder that instead of being restrained, Islamic clerics in Pakistan are currently having a ball with their coronavirus theories, while being invited on television ostensibly as experts on COVID-19.
Prominent Deobandi cleric Muhammad Taqi Usmani revealed on national TV that Prophet Muhammad had come in the dream of a Tableeghi Jamaatmember and "shared the cure for coronavirus." The cure was the recital of certain Quranic verses.
Asif Ashraf Jalali, a cleric from the Barelvi sect, vowed to hold an Islamic conference, personally "guaranteeing" the safety of all those attending, saying that even if one case of coronavirus is reported from the congregation he "should be hanged."
The prominent Shia cleric Zameer Naqvi declared on TV that he, too, has the cure for coronavirus, but won't share it because the government and the masses are not sufficiently "serious," and feared he could be mocked - just like "Aristotle and Socrates" were.
Even as the tally of coronavirus patients in Pakistan crosses 1,000, underlining a precipitously rising curve, the government’s first priority has been to ensure the Islamic clerics that their one-stop shops aren’t under any threat. The Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, whose government has reacted criminally late to the spread of COVID-19, met Islamic clerics from various sects in the lead up to last week’s Friday prayers to ensure them that mosques won’t be shut down in the province.
In return, the government expects support from the influential clerics at a time when the failure to take timely action against coronavirus is the latest in a long list of issues that have alienated the masses, the most prominent among them being the multi-pronged economic crises.
Perhaps already resigned to what might lie ahead, the government is more interested in fortifying its position against the backlash that could come in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemonium. Already backed by the all-powerful military, the government wants to keep the clergy on its side as well.
On cue, Islamic cleric Tariq Jamil, who leads the Raiwind congregation, was invited on to national television on Sunday, where he unequivocally backed Prime Minister Imran Khan, who had been under pressure to announce a nationwide lockdown.
Where governments have long subjugated themselves to the Islamists, who in turn have historically been used by the Army has tools to keep the civilian leaderships, and potentially dissenting masses, in check, this latest act of submission actually has unprecedentedly far-reaching repercussions.
Coronavirus cases rooted to the Tableeghi Jamaat alone have now expanded to the province of Sindh and the capital, Islamabad, where an entire locality has been quarantined after five members of the congregation were tested positive. In addition to Palestine, now residents of Kyrgyzstan, affiliated with Tableeghi Jamaat, have also tested positive.
Given that the Tableeghi Ijtema took place two weeks ago, which is also the incubation period of COVID-19, we are witnessing the cases linked to that gathering being reported this week, with more reports expected to follow.
Considering that Pakistan’s numbers are prodigiously underreported, one can only imagine the actual gravity of the spread that might have been caused by the millions who came together for the latest Friday prayers. What makes the alarm bells even more ominous is that there still is no closure of mosques in the offing, with another Friday looming.
In its bid to be ‘more Muslim than Mecca,’ Pakistan might end up becoming a super-spreader of the COVID-19. With a trajectory worse than Italy’s, and a deteriorated healthcare setup, Pakistan is headed towards an unimaginable crisis.
Imran Khan and his government appeasing the Islamists shows that they’re already making preparations to deflect the blame for what is to come. Meanwhile, this appeasement has become a root for the spread of the disaster, which is now engulfing the rest of the Muslim world.
Khan believes he has a friend in the shape of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He is also rallying in support of lifting sanctions against Iran. He generously praises Turkey’s Erdogan - who visited Pakistan last month - on the issue of Kashmir. He recently sent President Alvi to China as reaffirmation of support, and believes he has taken the country back into the U.S.’s good books with the Taliban deal.
However, should the coronavirus crisis reach gory proportions, Khan and his government is unlikely to find much backing – neither global, nor from within the mullah-military nexus. Meanwhile, every Friday that he allows congregational prayers, exponentially adds to the pandemonium.
‘God Will Protect Us’: #Coronavirus Spreads Through an Already Struggling #Pakistan
Doctors are refusing to show up for work. Clerics are refusing to close their mosques. And despite orders to stay at home, children continue to pack streets across Pakistan to play cricket, their parents unwilling to quarantine them in crowded homes.
Pakistan is facing its biggest challenge ever: how to mobilize its broken state as the number of coronavirus cases rapidly spreads in the world’s fifth-most populous country.
More than ever, the epidemic is showcasing weaknesses in the government, and the tensions between it and the country’s powerful military. Many within the country’s clerical establishment have refused to help, rejecting calls to limit mosque gatherings and bringing together at least 150,000 clerics from around the world this month in a religious gathering that helped spread the virus.
By Thursday afternoon, Pakistan’s cases had risen to 1,098, up from some 250 a week ago. Eight deaths have been reported. But many fear that the real numbers are much higher because of a lack of testing and, in some cases, suppressed information.
Already, Pakistan was struggling to provide electricity, water and adequate health care to its 220 million people. Diseases that have been controlled elsewhere, like rabies and polio, still persist here.
In recent weeks, as the coronavirus’s march across the globe was intensifying, Prime Minister Imran Khan played down its dangers. Pakistani officials bragged that the country was virus-free, but little was being done to set up testing anywhere.
Mr. Khan rejected calls from health care workers and provincial officials to enforce a lockdown, saying it would ruin the economy. Instead he urged citizens to practice social distancing and ordered everyone back to work, many returning to the sweltering, cramped factories that are the backbone of the economy.Finally, the military stepped in on Sunday and sidelined Mr. Khan, working with provincial governments to deploy across the country and enforce a lockdown. They erected a maze of military checkpoints in cities like Karachi and sent baton-wielding police officers to violently disperse crowds.
But the action may be too late. Doctors and nurses are refusing to come to work, fed up with the weak initial response to contain the virus’s spread.And the extremist clerics who often heckle or march against the civilian government, with the tacit approval of the military, are refusing to help. They largely ignored Mr. Khan’s call to limit Friday prayer gatherings. And even after the military deployed to try to enforce a lockdown, several clerics made videos that went viral in recent days, urging Pakistanis to come back to the mosques to worship.
To avoid mosques on Fridays would only invite God’s wrath at a time when people need his mercy, the clerics warned.
“We cannot skip Friday prayers because of fears of coronavirus,” said Shabbir Chand, a trader who attended a packed service in Karachi, the country’s biggest city. “Instead, we should gather in even larger numbers in mosques to pray to God to protect us from this fatal disease.”
A gathering of more than 150,000 people was held this month on the outskirts of Lahore by Tablighi Jamaat, one of the world’s largest proselytizing groups. The event was eventually called off at the urging of officials, but the participants had already come, sleeping and eating in close quarters.
The gathering proved a perfect transmission point, infecting indeterminate numbers of Pakistanis, at least two Kyrgyz citizens and two Palestinians who flew home and introduced the virus to the Gaza Strip. A similar gathering of Tablighi Jamaat in Malaysia infected more than 620 participants who then returned to dozens of countries across Southeast Asia.In Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, doctors and nurses at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, known as PIMS, who were tasked with screening coronavirus patients threatened to walk off the job this week if the government didn’t provide them with basic equipment like masks and gloves, which they received only on Saturday.
In one case at the hospital, government officials who had tested a woman who died there after showing symptoms of the coronavirus disease, Covid-19, refused to share her test results with doctors and nurses there and told them not to talk to journalists about it, they said.The state has always been too impoverished to provide masks to the doctors and nurses at the emergency rooms of public hospitals, and they have always bought their own. But prices are surging as civilians hoard whatever they can, forcing emergency room doctors at PIMS to spend $70 of their $460 monthly salary on masks, some said.while many of his colleagues called in sick this week, refusing to work as the virus surges, one doctor said he would continue to scrub in every day.
“We have no other way. We just can’t think about it. If we don’t fight it, who will?” the doctor said, adding that morale was low among his colleagues. “So we tell each other, ‘Our profession is sanctified from God. God will protect us.’ But those are just words.”
If the virus spreads much further, Pakistan’s entire health care system may melt down. In Karachi, a port city of some 20 million, there are only 600 beds in intensive care wards. There are 1,700 ventilators across the country, and last week, there were only 15,000 N95 masks for doctors and nurses, officials said.“We don’t even have anti-rabies vaccines. How can we deal with thousands of people who will come here for coronavirus treatment?” said one doctor at a state-run hospital, who also complained that they had not been issued protective gear. As a government employee the doctor had been barred from talking to the media, and requested anonymity to express concerns.In February, it became clear Pakistan was facing a major outbreak of coronavirus, as the disease surged in Iran, which quickly became an epicenter. Thousands of Pakistanis visit Iran every month for work or religious pilgrimage, and the countries share a long border.
Officials closed the border, but hundreds of Pakistanis managed to get back in anyway, either rerouting through Afghanistan to cross the border there, or bribing guards to get back in, witnesses and officials said.
In order to prevent thousands more from illegally crossing, officials decided to quarantine them in Taftan, a border town. But conditions were so bad — cramped and filthy, with the virus spreading quickly — that people being held there rioted, burning part of the camp down.
“We had no proper food, no screening of anyone for coronavirus,” said Syed Haider Ali, a student who had been quarantined at Taftan.
“It was not an attack on the camp, but an attempt to rescue ourselves from the animallike treatment we were receiving,” he said. “We appealed to the government to treat us like humans, but it fell on deaf ears.”
The government kept some 4,600 people under a 14-day quarantine in Taftan and let most go after they developed no symptoms. They returned to their villages and cities across Pakistan, where dozens turned out to have been infected when they tested by local health care workers.
Now the government is trying to build more quarantine centers, but they keep coming under attack by residents who live nearby and do not want the risk of another botched government operation.In Karachi, military checkpoints have been erected every few hundred yards throughout the city and the police make rounds to enforce a lockdown, wielding batons to beat people back into their homes.But in the slums, a carnival-like atmosphere has burst out onto the streets, with schools shut down and children playing in the narrow alleyways that are lined with open sewers. During a recent visit by journalists, the police swept through the neighborhood, yelling at people to get back indoors. But residents ignored them, and, outnumbered, the officers soon gave up.
Janangir Baloch, who lives with dozens of family members in a cramped three-story building, pointed at the children playing in the street as he explained why keeping them home was a lost cause.
“Tell me how I can observe social distancing when I live with 40 other people,” Mr. Baloch said. “It won’t work.”
Imran Khan can’t keep Pakistanis away even from shut mosques. It’s coronavirus vs ‘faith’
NAILA INAYAT
Here’s an anecdote that will explain to the world how Pakistanis are fighting the coronavirus pandemic. On Tuesday, I met a coronavirus-enlightened Uber driver in Lahore. He was wearing a face mask, regularly using hand sanitiser, encouraging his passengers to also do the same. He made rather compelling points on why people should stay home and how social distancing is the key to not catching the virus. At the end of the ride, he asked me which is the closest mosque where he could offer his Friday prayers?
Social distancing in Pakistan is good but when it comes to coronavirus jo Allah ki marzi.
Pakistan waiting for Godot
Like the rest of the world, coronavirus outbreak is a real crisis for Pakistan. Yet our current state is like that of Vladimir and Estragon from Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy Waiting For Godot. We are waiting for the arrival of someone named Godot who might never arrive, or guess what, he might not even exist. But we are waiting for you Godot to help us.
As we wait for Godot, an unending and rather useless debate on lockdown and curfew continues in Pakistan. What is a lockdown and what is a curfew? Can a poor country like Pakistan afford a curfew? But with hundreds and thousands of lives at stake, can the government afford inaction? One set of governments, Sindh, Balochistan, and Gilgit-Baltistan follow a strict lockdown. While Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa along with Islamabad are following a token lockdown.
In the middle of this chaos, there is no respite for Pakistan from the spread of Coronavirus. More than 1,000 people have now tested Covid-19 positive and the suspected cases now stand at 7,736. The country has also reported eight deaths.
The closure of markets, shopping malls, restaurants and public transport is one step to break the chain of the virus but the continuing Jummah congregational prayers in mosques doesn’t help the cause. The churches and temples in Punjab and Sindh were voluntarily closed by the Hindu and Christian community leaders after an increase in Covid-19 cases. The government, fearing backlash, has not been able to ban people praying in mosques.
Pakistan never stops praying
The annual Tablighi Jamaat gathering brought 250,000 people from across 90 countries in Raiwind, a Lahore suburb, continued for a few days before it was called off. The result was that two men from Gaza were infected with coronavirus when they returned from Pakistan.
Twelve other participants of this Jamaat, from suburbs of Islamabad, have been found to be infected. Four others were found positive in Sindh. One Kyrgyzstan preacher of the Jammat was diagnosed in an Islamabad mosque, his 13 companions were quarantined and the mosque was locked down and disinfected. However, none of this has stopped the Tablighis from gathering, in Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where hundreds of participants defied the law and continued to preach and pray.
One of the prominent leaders of the Tablighi Jamaat, Maulana Tariq Jameel, a close ally of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, could have been instrumental in stopping the main ijitima in Raiwind. After all, he is used to encouraging people to not shake hands and saying emotional prayers for PM Khan on national television. But sadly, a decree from the Maulana to influence his followers wasn’t something that government thought of.
The doubts that Pakistan’s first coronavirus victim, from Mardan may have exposed thousands of people to the disease is now becoming a reality. As many as 39 people who were in touch with the 50-year-old Saadat Khan have now tested positive. He had returned from a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and was welcomed by 2,000 people in his village, ten days later he tested positive and died. His relatives say that he was sick when he arrived but was not screened at the airport. Failure to screen people at the airports has been the biggest blunder of this government.
Where the President’s call goes in vain
Last Friday, despite a call from President of Pakistan Arif Alvi, encouraging people to offer Friday prayers at home, the Faisal mosque in Islamabad was flooded with people. This Friday won’t be any different. As Ruet-e-Halal Committee chairman Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman announced that despite the coronavirus outbreak, the mosques will remain open for worship. He called coronavirus a warning from Allah for reformation.
President Alvi is back with another request, asking Ulema to stop congregational prayers in mosques. Why should a President make such requests when he, through his government, has the power to stop these prayers in public interest?
There is a belief at the mass level that not praying in a mosque is akin to leaving Allah. There is a strong resistance to even the advisory against avoiding handshakes, with believers saying that it is a Sunnah (tradition). To those who advise them against visiting mosques the ‘believers’ pose this question: what else are you willing to leave just to save your life?
That’s not all. At PIMS hospital in Islamabad, two Covid-19 patients, who went missing for a couple of hours, returned after offering Friday prayers at a nearby mosque. Even closing down mosques is not proving effective. Now, how does one explain people in Karachi, gathering in large numbers, to pray outside a closed mosque in a lockdown?
You cannot blame the people for having stringent beliefs, when Pakistan as a State over the years has overly relied on religion, giving the people a false sense that only they are the true contractors of Islam. This inculcation of Holier than thou attitude has led Pakistan to a point where you have a population that is resistant to change or scientific reasoning. The argument that Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Iran or Indonesia have all closed down mosques falls on deaf ears.
We hit a dead end when we reason that coronavirus has no religion, it will impact you and others regardless of your colour, religion or creed.
The need is to break the chain of stupidity. And the only way forward for the Pakistan government is to strictly close down mosques and stop people from ba-jamaat prayers and congregational religious activities, if at all it wants to deal with the storm that is coming Pakistan’s way.