By: Syed Shahzaib Haider
Pakistan a country of 220 million people facing innumerable issues. During the time of Covid-19 Pakistan is not just fighting against the coronavirus as an issue but many others as well. Poverty is a bigger problem for my country which causes a lot more problems. As you can see when the whole world is trying to get rid of Covid-19 by taking some assured measures published by the world health organization to stop the spread, Pakistan is completely out of funds to be able to and help its people to get safe and to stay protected against this contagious virus.
In the country where 48 million people are living under the poverty line those who cannot afford to have an appropriate meal two times a day, are so unable to have basic protective measures say for example the masks, Gloves, Goggles etc. In fact, a certain percentage of the people in the country needs more attention in comparison to an average person who can stay home and survive this crunch in order to maintain their wellbeing.
Because poor people work every single day as labor to survive, Reason if they don’t work the day will be gone without food for them and their children, moreover most of them are homeless. So the problem our government is facing during the outbreak of covid-19 in Pakistan is how to help people not to get effected to the virus especially those who cannot afford to stay home for very long period of time as the first case was registered in Pakistan was in March 20, 2020.
Reason being that of god forbidden it happens in any part of the country at large we are almost already out of resources to give them the basic healthcare emergency treatments. We don’t have considerable number of beds in our hospitals the number of doctors working in Pakistan is not enough to control or to collaborate with the situation the ventilators are so less in numbers and are already occupied because we already have the tally crossed one hundred thousand patients registered and its increasing on daily basis with a huge jump in it every day. For example, in the capital of the country we have not more than three hospitals very limited resources who are dealing the patients of covid-19 whereas the number of people living in Islamabad is almost 1.2 million.
Our Government first imposed the lock down as every other responsible state, but when people started to come out of theirs homes in large number and explained that they cannot survive without the basic necessities, Government had to ease out the lockdown in the country amid the fear of people dying of hunger. The prime minister Imran Khan who is working daylong to find out the way how he can help the nation come out of this situation started to distribute some amount of money to those who lost their purchasing power after a week time at home. But being country with a lot of debt and no reserves that idea of giving money couldn’t get so far.
The situation in Pakistan is no less than a famine for a lot in the country. Our people are suffering from so many other problems and there is no hope so far, the rich in the country is trying to help the poor but that not enough to have them get better. We are trying to live this hard time and by way of praying to God to help us as he helped the people earlier in times gone by.
The writer is special correspondent and columnist at The Dayspring