GUJRAT: Jamaat-i-Islami Emir Sirajul Haq says Prime Minister Imran Khan has yet to call the opposition to form a joint strategy to wage a fight against Covid-19 which shows government’s lack of seriousness in steering the country out of the crisis.

Instead of putting a fight against the coronavirus, poverty, ignorance and other ills, the PTI government and its ministers seemed ready to fight with the opposition just at a time when politics should be set aside, he said at a media conference at the Islamic Center here on Tuesday.

JI Punjab emir Dr Tariq Saleem, Gujrat emir Syed Ziaullah, Alkhidmat Foundation Ansar Dhool and others were also present.

Mr Haq said the government was doing a wheelie by not showing a spirit of national unity through adopting a joint course of action in the current circumstances. There was no coordination between the federal and provincial governments in such a critical situation, he said.

Since coming into power, he said, the PTI government had been on ventilator and it would not survive after some time. He endorsed the chief justice’s view that despite recruiting an army of ministers, advisers and special assistants, the government could not show any performance.

He said the government had abandoned the overseas Pakistanis in a critical situation by not making any plan to bring them from Europe, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and other countries.

He said the JI would arrange quarantine centres for keeping those stranded abroad if the government send special flights to bring them back and his party could host those people for 14 days in quarantine centres and the JI had already provided ration, food and other necessary items to 3.6 million families across Pakistan through its workers at the doorsteps of the masses.

Earlier, he visited a church where he handed over 100 ration bags carrying food items as well as flour bags for the distribution among the Christians. He also went to the district jail for the distribution of food items among the inmates.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2020