By: Muhammad Ibrahim Bhatti
Here we go again with the perennial war between the federal and Sindh governments over how to contain the fourth wave of the Covid-I9 pandemic taking center stage and distracting from the actual task at hand. The latest war of words stems from the Sindh government’s decision to impose a crippling lockdown till August 8th as Covid cases in the province continue to surge. At the forefront of the federal government’s response to the Sindh government’s decision in the regard has been Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry who has blasted the PPP led Shah Government for having taken its lockdown decision unilaterally and without consulting the NCOC which is overseeing the national response to the pandemic. Quick to re-ton to Mr. Chaudhry’s criticism has been Murtaza Wahab who as the Sindh Government’s spokesperson has stated categorically that the province had every right to impose a lockdown on its own.
By now. the nation has been used to this constant tug of war between the central and the Sindh government but what continues to disappoint and amaze is how both sides are responsible for politicizing a very serious crisis to this extent. The perennial blame game between the two rival governments got even more interesting and took a turn for the worse on Tuesday with Fawad Chauhdry blaming the Sindh government’s poor governance for the worsening Covid-I9 situation in Karachi and Hyderabad. Mr. Chaudhry who is never at a loss for words citied his assessment on the fact that the percentage of vaccinated people in these two major cities is low compared to the rest of the country. This certainly might be the case but the Prime Minister must refrain the Information Minister from making such unwarranted charges as they only make the fight against Covid harder and take away much needed media attention from the actual problem at hand and that is the dreaded virus and its fourth wave which is proving to be even more dangerous and deadly due to the delta variant.
