- Dealing with the pandemic and the locust
A PTI MNA has tried to kill two birds with one stone. He has advised the nation to eat the locust which he says can cure Covid-19 patients. On Sunday, Climate Change Minister of State Zartaj Gul told people that Covid-19 meant that the coronavirus has 19 points that can be applied to any country based on its respective immunity levels. A proposal prepared by the PTI’s Ministry of National Food Security and Research (NFS&R) is no less dumb. Coming as they do from government circles, the suggestions raise serious questions about the capacity in the PTI leadership to understand, let alone tackle, two highly serious issues with existential consequences for the people of the country.
The NCOC had evolved a test, trace, quarantine strategy (TTQ) to deal with the coronavirus. The government seems to have changed the strategy without explanation. Tests were reduced without explanation from 30,000 last week to 21,835 on Wednesday. It is being suggested now that despite a rise in deaths, the number of positive cases is coming down due to smart lockdowns or Pakistanis developing herd immunity. It is also being said that tests have been reduced because we have been getting fewer numbers of suspects in hospitals. The government wants people to look after themselves by observing SOPs instead of depending on government for support.
Quarantine centres across Punjab have been closed down, including six in Lahore, following a change in the policy which required the suspected and even confirmed Covid-19 patients to isolate themselves in their homes. The majority of people in the lowincome groups rarely have two bedrooms where children live with parents and grandparents. Quarantining suspected patients in such accommodations means consigning entire families to the pandemic.
The government was unprepared to meet the locust threat and whatever arrangements it made belatedly, failed miserably to stop the locust attack. Consequently the locusts have already destroyed crops in Balochistan and parts of Sindh. It is a cruel joke to call upon people to kill, collect and sell the locust to factories manufacturing chickenfeed or make plans to prepare compost from a mix of locust and other bio-waste material for sale in the market. The government has left people to fend for themselves.