Sports legend Shahid Afridi has said that the government and private schools after their reopening should religiously follow the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Covid-19 given by the state, as any leniency in this regard is likely to create irreversible damage to the health of students, teachers and communities at large, in addition to the cause of education that already has been adversely effected over the past six months. “These SOPs should not be neglected as like any other set of government’s rules that are generally disregarded by us as a national habit like the traffic laws as our future will be at stake if schools will not follow the guidelines against the spread of Coronavirus,” said Shahid Afridi while speaking at a press conference at Wangi Goth, (Manghopir Road) one of the eight SAF (Shahid Afiridi Foundation) schools run by his charity in Karachi. SAF runs these charitable schools with the Green Crescent Trust (GCT) as their implementation partners. Although the Wangi Goth School is set to reopen from September 21, 2020, as per the decision of Sindh government, a model class was especially arranged with presence of students and teachers to demonstrate observance of the SOPs in the real situation as both Shahid Afridi and GCT CEO ZahidSaeed witnessed the demo. The GCT and SAF joined hands with HSE Department of their joint donor, the Indus Pharma, to prepare the school SOPs whose practical demonstration was also given during the press conference. Shahid Afridi briefed media persons on the occasion that SOPs were largely based on the international document on this issue jointly prepared by globally renowned organizations the WHO, UNICEF, and IFRC. The GCT CEO Zahid Saeed also spoke on the occasion on the importance of school SOPs for safety of students and teachers. He also said that the SOPs authored by the two charities in active consultative support by Indus Pharma-HSE Department; would be adopted by all the eight SAF schools as well as 150-plus charitable schools of the GCT in remote and rural parts of Sindh where 29,000 children of the underprivileged families were enrolled. Also on the occasion, ShahidAfridi and ZahidSaeed appealed to the concerned donors, philanthropists, corporate sector and well-off persons to come forward and support the joint charitable drive of the SAF and GCT to educate children of the needy families in Sindh, wholeheartedly. “The cause to educate children of the deserving families on charitable basis has been severely affected as the economy drastically shrunk due to Covid-19,” they said.
