Governments Contribution to combat COVID-19 and Pakistan’s dilemma

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Corona Virus has become one of the global threats to the society that has gripped all aspects of our social life, its growing impact has not only crippled our social but religious and ethical values. 

Governments have to play vital role in making possible the suppression of the Corona virus responsible for Covid-19 and associated crisis. Many governments have taken aggressive action to limit the spread of Covid-19 in their country. The Government’s policies and decisions should aspire to:

• Ensure health care resources are available to all citizens.
• Limit the impact on different departments and services (especially critical services)
• Alleviate the impact on people and companies (Social, Economic, Cultural impacts etc.)
• Provide relevant information to ease off concerns regarding the virus.
• Invest in Research and development of Healthcare to find the cure and prevention.
• Ensure that the right measures are taken at the right time.

For the success of any policy or action it’s important the decisions are taken by each level of government in their own capacity and all should be compatible with each other; more importantly agreed by each tier of Government in a country.

Governments in Pakistan: Corona Virus is prevalent threat in Pakistan too with total tally rising to 48,091, while mortalities being 2.1% of this number. We peek into detail how Governments in Pakistan have formulated a policy or taken actions in order to fulfill their responsibilities mentioned above.

We should also discuss how Government of Pakistan is particularly hampered in its ability to deal with COVID-19 by the social, political and cultural context of the country.

Foremost responsibility for Governments at every tier is to ensure adequate availability of health care facilities. In Pakistan, provincial governments are responsible for major portion of health care and they were quick to take decision in this regard and ordered for setting up of new quarantine and isolation facilities to accommodate patients, ordered personal protective equipments (PPEs), ensured enough medical staff, in this regard they were readily helped by NGOs, and as a result success is increasing testing capacity of country, increased number of recovered patients and also successful implementation of plasma therapy to treat Covid-19 infected patients with compromised immunity. There have been problems, such as reports of substandard screening kits giving huge number of false positive cases and lack of adequate facilities in some quarantine centers, that should be addressed. 

To promote public knowledge and awareness, the government has, in collaboration with the telecommunication industry, replaced dialtones with an awareness message to the caller about the dangers of Covid-19 and measures that can be taken to remain safe. The government regularly sends an SMS, which among others, encourage people to wash hands and practice social distancing.

Most radical action taken by Governments in Pakistan was enforcing lockdowns starting with closure of academic institutions to full shutdown of businesses in many areas. This was the action which required great thought and caution. The social impact of this uncertain situation is huge as people are asked to adopt different lifestyle and their academic and work life also affected. Different activities are affected by closure of many services, which require Governments to ponder upon and implement a smarter lockdown. The economic ramifications of the crisis are also significant factor in Pakistan and could not be neglected in devising any policy to combat Covid-19. GDP growth rate already slipped to 3% in start of 2020 and further loss in economy is also expected due to action against Corona Virus, so, it’s imperative to keep watch of economy while taking any action as many businesses suffer and might also require Government support to recover.

So far Government relief includes:

1. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has announced a Temporary Economic Refinance Facility to fuel new investment. This will offer subsidised loans to the manufacturing sector and a Refinance Facility to allow banks to get loans at zero mark-up, which they can offer to hospitals at 3% for five years. The SBP has also reduced the interest rate to 8%. 
2. A separate package worth PKR 100 billion ($600.42 million) is announced for SMEs, which form close to 90% of all enterprises in Pakistan and generate 40% of non-agriculture employment.
3. Different subsidies, including energy subsidy worth Rs.23 bn, are announced for exporters to reduce the impact of Coronavirus on their operations.

Governments also have to take care of daily wages employees to cover their loss so that it can be ensured that their household runs smoothly, for this purpose many schemes are introduced, by both federal and provincial governments, such as Ehsaas cash where Rs.12000 are paid as a vital relief, Ehsaas Ration program which is a platform where government will facilitate linking of donors and beneficiaries, Sindh relief initiative by Sindh government which is designed to streamline efforts of Government & NGOs as whatever assistance will be given to poor their details will be uploaded to an app so that there should be no irregularity nor duplicate entries, there are many other programs all over Pakistan which provide affected people with cash and basic need items. Pakistan is also utilizing one of the world’s most well targeted cash transfer programmes – the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) for immediate top-up to the existing five million families under BISP with Rs.3000/ month.

One more notable scheme to deal with crises was to provide chance of earning for out-of-work labourers by forestry department; Department plans to plant billions of trees across the country and will pay Rs.500 a day to workers for planting and taking care of trees.

Dealing with resistances is also vital for any policy to work. In Pakistan, religious issue needs to be considered more seriously than many other nations. One example of that can be seen by the fact that one of the initial responses was closure of Masjids in most Muslim nations including Saudi Arabia, however, fearing backlash from religious groups Pakistan delayed that decision ultimately deciding on matter after satisfying different religious factions which was an important success. As Ramzan approached, government had to reconsider its stance on closures of Masjids and to maintain the balance they allowed for Taraweeh namaz to be offered after abiding to standard operating procedures (SOPs).  Another, more recent issue which raised worries for Government (Sindh government) was allowing shia processions on 21^st of Ramzan to commemorate Shahadat of Hazrat Ali (R.A) as SOPs were violated in some processions and also other sects frowning on this permission.  

So, Governments in Pakistan have to formulate a shrewd policy as every decision will impact on many interrelated things and as the challenges facing Pakistan in the current crisis are huge, it remains to be seen whether the massive interventions that the government has undertaken will be enough to mitigate the loss of life and economic hardship.

Contribution from leaders of all Governments is necessary to defeat Covid'19

Cooperation between different levels of government: Worst of the challenges posed to adequate policy making against Covid’19 is cooperation obstacle. There is a lack of coordination between the federal and provincial governments. There have been many such examples such as enforcing lockdown at different times and with varied severity and condemning each other’s policies and actions. More recently, Pakistan Railways decided to run trains for Eid holidays but on condition that Sindh and Balochistan provincial governments favour the decision; success was when ultimately both gave green signal to bring train back on track. So, these suggest that our policy could be impeded by lack of cooperation between governments. Pakistan’s legislative system is forged in a way that it demands unity from all aspects to deal with this crisis as health services are under provinces, all provinces are working independently missing, on many occasions, considerations which could be beneficial for whole nation, on top of it border control and airports are with federal and provinces cannot form adequate legislation there without help of federal government and federal Government is sluggish in any such cooperation.

In discussing the role of Government we cannot ignore role of local Government which in this pandemic can be a good way of reaching communities for information sharing as well as making sure SOPs are followed, it can be tremendously helpful in providing assistance to local communities more effectively. However, in Pakistan, local government is nowhere in the scenes and, hence, their pivotal role in reducing the transmission of disease is ignored. If Government cooperation is restored, only then can we fight this Covid’19 more effectively.