PESHAWAR: Qaumi Watan Party chairman Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao on Saturday underlined the need for building a national consensus to fight the coronavirus pandemic in the country effectively and mitigate the public suffering.He also asked the government to fix the prices of petroleum products at Rs60 per litre to ensure the trickledown effect of the falling fuel prices in the international market.

Mr Sherpao was addressing his party’s central executive committee (CEC) meeting through a video link here on Saturday, according to a press statement.

He urged the government to fight the Covid-19 pandemic from the front by taking all the stakeholders, including the opposition parties, into confidence. He, however, said that the government lacked the vision and ability to deal with this situation.

“This is a huge challenge and we have to fight it collectively by forging unity among our ranks,” he said. He said that the government should evolve consensus at the national, provincial and district levels by holding multiparty conferences to coordinate efforts to contain spread of the virus.

He also underlined the need for launching awareness campaigns, particularly in the rural areas, to sensitise the people about the seriousness of this problem.

The QWP leader said the government must come up with a tangible strategy to provide relief to the people, particularly the poor. He also asked the rulers to lower the prices of petroleum products and fix the same at Rs60 per litre.

Sherpao calls for national consensus to tackle coronavirus

He said that the relief package announced by the government was not enough. He elaborated that Rs3,000 was a meagre amount and it should be raised to Rs15,000.

The QWP leader also suggested to the government to announce considerable cut in the utility bills as the lockdown had badly hit the people.

He said that the actual number of coronavirus patients could be much higher provided the government conducted the tests in bulk to ascertain the real figures.

Rejecting the proposed creation of ‘Tiger force’, he said the government should not politicise distribution of relief goods among the deserving people and instead it should engage the local government representatives, polio workers, teachers and civil society organisations for the purpose.

The meeting also suggested that the government should ensure the restoration of 3G/4G internet services in the merged districts and allow international and national NGOs to execute projects for the benefit of the local people.

He paid tribe to the doctors and medical staff and urged the government to provide them with personal protective equipment. The meeting demanded release of Jang Group’s editor-in-chief Mir Shakilur Rahman.

Others who spoke on the occasion also included party’s general secretary Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli, senior vice-chairman Mohammad Ghufran, vice-chairman Ahmad Nawaz and KP chairman Sikandar Sherpao.

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2020