QUETTA: Balochistan Home Minister Mir Ziaullah Langove rejected opposition’s allegations of corruption levelled against the provincial government over new coronavirus measures.

Speaking at a press conference at the Quetta Press Club, he said opposition parties were deliberately diverting people’s attention from the government’s earnest measures against Covid-19 to protect their own interests. Mr Langove also criticised an opposition member for requisitioning an assembly session when the province was in the grip of the pandemic.

According to the minister, the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) had been purchasing safety equipment for Covid-19 through a sub-committee monitored by the chief minister and not as the opposition parties were alleging that the Director General (DG) of the PDMA was himself signing cheques and purchasing safety goods.

He said that despite meagre resources, the Balochistan government had hosted 10,000 pilgrims at Taftan border and provided them with quarantine facilities.

“Unfortunately, there is a perception that Taftan has become Wuhan but Covid-19 was spread in Pakistan by the those who travelled by air and landed at different airports rather than by people quarantined in Taftan,” the minister claimed.

Replying to a query regarding the implementation of “smart lockdown”, Mr Lang­ove said the provincial government had eased the lockdown upon the request of trader com­munity and the situation of daily labourers but if there were violations of the SOPs then the pandemic situation in the province mig­ht turn from bad to worse, he further added.

“We have plans to impose the next lockdown with more strictness if masses and traders don’t implement the SOPs which we have set for their own protection.”

Additional Chief Secretary Home and Tribal Affairs Abdul Basit and Director General PDMA Imran Zarkoon were also present at the press conference.

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2020