LARKANA: The management of Edhi centre in Larkana city suspended its operation on Friday in protest against what it complained was “insulting attitude of police” with its volunteers during lockdown.

The policemen deployed at different points in the city had unnecessarily been creating obstacles in service delivery and delaying shifting of patients to hospitals’ emergency wards, said Haji Mohammed Saleem, the person in charge of the Edhi centre.

“We kept ignoring their [rude] behaviour but things got complicated when the ambulance carrying a patient was stopped at the underpass near the Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH), city block, by the SHO of the Civil Lines police station”, he said.

The SHO not only insulted the driver and volunteers but also turned down request by the patient’s relatives to let them proceed to the hospital, he said.

SSP intervenes to get matter solved, restore services

Finding no other option, volunteers from a nearby Edhi centre, at the city’s women jail, were called in and they managed to shift the patient to the hospital on a stretcher, he explained.

Haji Saleem stated that the relief body’s workers had been putting up with this kind of trauma time and again at the hands of the area police. Consequently the

matter was conveyed to the [Edhi’s] central office that ordered halting of the charity’s voluntary services from this centre immediately, he said.

He said different channels approached the local office with request to restore the services. “But we had to decline because it is now possible only when such an order is received from our head office,” he added.

Larkana SSP Masood Ahmed Bangash, realising sensitivity of the situation contacted Edhi’s head office and assured it of all cooperation.

The Civil Lines SHO, Parvaiz Aslam Abro, and traffic sergeant Abdul Waheed Abro also visited the local Edhi centre and held negotiations with the management. On their assurance that the police would “mend their ways” and extend cooperation to Edhi volunteers in future, the services were finally restored.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2020