Rs 144 billion to be distributed among poor to cope with coronavirus: Asad

ISLAMABAD, May 15 (APP):Minister for Planning, Development and special Initiatives Asad Umar Friday said Rs 144 billion would be distributed among the poorest of the poor under the Ehsaas programme to help them in coping with the coronavirus outbreak.

Speaking in the National Assembly while taking part in the debate on the coronavirus, he said Rs 100 billion was already distributed among eight million families as part of the biggest economic relief package announced by the government led by Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Rs 50 billion was allocated to give relief in electricity bills to 3.5 million small businesses and under the PM’s Corona Relief Programme, the government would give relief to those who had lost their jobs due to restrictions on businesses during the lockdown, he added.

Relief packages of Rs 50 billion each were announced for the agriculture and health sectors, he said, adding the government’s relief initiatives directly or indirectly would benefit 80 percent of the population.

He said the opposition parties had divergent views on the issue of imposing lockdown during the ongoing epidemic as some of their leaders wanted strict lockdown while the others wanted it to be eased.

He said it was not possible to stop the spread of coronavirus and no country, including the United States, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and others could stop it. “The virus will spread as it is a highly infectious disease and spread through human transmission. The countries imposed lockdown but when they eased it the virus started to spread again as happened in South Korea, Singapore and Wuhan, China. We have to live with the virus.”
He said in some cases those countries, which adopted strict lockdown, had higher death rate than those which had a targetted lockdown. The coronavirus could not be ended without a vaccine, he added.
He said other countries had reached the same conclusion as arrived at by Prime Minister Imran Khan at the start of the coronavirus spread and he rightly feared that the lockdown would increase poverty, hunger, unemployment and economic deprivation.
When the prime minister took a policy decision against the lockdown he faced a lot of criticism but he feared that about two-third of the country’s population. which was poor and middle class. would suffer in the coronavirus pandemic, he explained.
The minister said according to the research of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), the income of 10 million to 10.8 million Pakistanis vanished or substantially reduced due to the coronavirus.
He said the government would have to create a balance to protect the livelihoods of the people and also save their lives from the coronavirus outbreak.
He quoted the example of the United States in which 40 states decided to ease the lockdown at a time when two to three thousand people were dying in the country every day.
He said the situation in Pakistan was still under control despite the increase in the number of infections and deaths in the month of May.
He feared that the infections and deaths would continue to increase in May and June, but was optimistic that as per information available, Pakistan’s health system would not be overwhelmed.
Pakistan, he said, now had 70 laboratories to undertake coronavirus tests and it was conducting 13,500 tests every day and the number would be further raised. About 1,000 more ventilators would be provided to the hospitals, and 100,000 doctors and medics would be trained in the use of personal protection equipment while 5,000 medical staff would be given specialised training for working in intensive care units.
He urged the citizens to continue to practice social distancing to slow the spread of coronavirus.
With the help of technology, a system was in place to trace and quarantine patients, and use targetted lockdown of hotspots and in that way the virus was contained at 500 places, he told.
He profusely lauded doctors, nurses, paramedics, police, Rangers, army, officials of all government departments and district administration, and people of Pakistan for their efforts and dedication to protect the country from the threat of coronavirus.