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THIS is not how it’s done. Anybody who has ever worked on completing a large task will tell you that you are supposed to anticipate the challenges that will come your way, not wait for them to materialise and then mobilise in a hurry. It is not rocket science. It is basic management.
I read with disbelief a story that is still working its way through the news flow this week that shows how this government is still not managing the Covid crisis, they are muddling through it, despite almost one year since it began. A few days ago it was reported that the National Engineers Welfare Association (NEWA) wrote a letter to the prime minister telling him about two oxygen-producing plants at the Steel Mill in Karachi that have been lying idle since 2015.
“We wish to inform and bring into your kind knowledge that Pakistan Steel Mills has two state-of-the-art oxygen-producing plants that were manufactured in France, imported to Pakistan and installed at Pakistan Steel Mills to be used in the process of steelmaking,” the letter said according to one news report.
Read: Special NCOC committee monitoring oxygen situation in country, says Dr Faisal
In its letter, NEWA told the PM that each of these plants is capable of producing 260 tons of oxygen per day. “Looking into a grave situation we would like to request your immediate action in restoring one of the two oxygen-production plants at Pakistan Steel Mills to be fully operational” the letter continued, and the engineers offered their help. “If you wish we can initiate this project which will help Pakistan in combating the current situation of covid-19.”
It staggers the imagination to consider the scale of the muddling through we are seeing at the top as this crisis escalates.
The letter was written shortly after a press conference which featured an unmasked PM Imran Khan sitting in a closed room with some of his cabinet members and advisers urging people to wear masks “especially when in a closed room with other people”. He shot down the idea of lockdowns saying the poor will suffer and instead urged people to take the infection seriously and “follow SOPs”. He also thanked the ulema specifically “for successfully following SOPs in their mosques” during taraweeh prayers last year, and went on to say there was no evidence that mosques had served as transmission hotspots in last year’s spike in cases (that came right after Eid).
After he spoke, Planning Minister Asad Umar gave a short briefing on the Covid situation in the country and said that almost 90 per cent of the country’s oxygen-producing capacity is already being used and there is no room for further expansion if demand from the health sector continues to rise. Asad had warned about this earlier too. On April 19, he tweeted the following: “Hospital fill up continuing to grow. Critical care patients now above 4500, which is 30% higher than peak in june [sic] last year. Oxygen supply capacity in the country is now under stress. Sop compliance remains low. We are making a huge mistake by not following sop’s.”
A day or two after news of NEWA’s letter was carried by the papers, the government dispatched a team to the Steel Mill to assess the state of the oxygen plants and see what would be required to get them operational again. Seeing the flurry of activity around the issue, the mill’s labour unions kicked into action and pleaded for restarting the plant, and pointed out that the workers who used to operate these plants had been laid off. They claimed the plants could be made operational within 10 days, though others with some knowledge of the plants say it could take months.
It is hard to get figures on Pakistan’s total oxygen-production capacity and the scale of the demand that is emerging now. In one of his reported remarks, Dr Faisal Sultan is quoted as saying Pakistan produces 800 metric tons of oxygen, and I can only assume this is daily since the quoted remark does not say. Now we learn, as the oxygen supply situation has come “under stress”, that capacity equal to 65pc of the total output has been lying idle and could take days, possibly months, to revive?
So here is what I want to know. Did the government only learn a few days ago that this much oxygen-producing capacity exists in the country and has been sitting idle? Did they seriously take no inventory of our total capacity at the start of this crisis and chart ways to ramp this up rapidly should the need arise? Did they really wait almost a week after Asad had already tweeted that the oxygen supply is “under stress” before even becoming aware of the fact that these two plants exist and can possibly be brought back into production?
If so then it staggers the imagination to consider the scale of the muddling through we are seeing at the top as this crisis escalates. This is even more so because the same sort of failures are evident in all other areas too, whether enforcement of mitigation measures, arrangements for vaccine supply (that merits an article on its own), awareness of what exactly these SOPs are that we are all supposed to follow, except that we should wear masks and avoid large crowds, etc.
This is not how it’s done. You do not tackle large challenges by muddling through them. Look at how they have just botched the school exams issue, or travel restrictions for incoming travellers or interprovincial movement of people. Look at how they botched vaccine procurement and are now making excuses that vaccines are in short supply everywhere in the world. Yes they are in short supply, but Bangladesh has managed to cover 10pc of its population with its vaccine procurement effort so far, Nepal 47pc, Sri Lanka 40pc, Myanmar 31pc, Indonesia 47pc, Thailand 48pc, Vietnam 41pc and so on. This is signed deals as of March 31, according to data from the Duke Global Health Innovation Centre.
Meanwhile Pakistan has secured supplies to cover 0.4pc of its population. Need one say more?
The writer is a business and economy journalist.
Twitter: @khurramhusain
Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2021
