Articles and letters may be edited for the purposes of clarity and space. They are published in good faith with a view to enlightening all the stakeholders. However, the contents of these writings may not necessarily match the views of the newspaper.
Worsening Covid situation
This refers to the news report ‘Justice Isa for opening all hospitals for public after Covid ordeal’ (August 5).
The bane of Pakistan is that all too often, people feel free to criticize others and readily suggest remedial measures for all that is wrong in other persons’ domain, while least bothered about deficiencies in their own spheres of action.
Of course, as Pakistanis, we have a right to make suggestions but in situations where we lack specialist knowledge of the subject matter, our recommendations should be in general terms and not in the form of specific instructions, which amount to interference in others’ domains.
Like for example, Justice Qazi Faez Isa has suggested opening up all public-sector hospitals, including combined military hospitals, due to spike in Covid-19 infections.
He stated, and rightly so, that with not everyone having access to hospitals would result in increasing deaths.
Justice Isa also explained the motive behind his suggestion to be the fact that if not all hospitals were made available to public – keeping the status of the combined military hospitals exclusive – will further exacerbate class and social divides and people will continue to suffer and die because of an unequal system.
However, in our environment of a care-free public and non-observance of SOPs, even if CMHs were opened up for public, they will fill up soon, bringing us back to square one.
In these circumstances, it would have been far better if, together with requesting public to observe SOPs – like he does – Justice Isa also suggested raising the vaccination rate, which is perhaps the only real deterrence against Covid-19.
Also, reducing class and social divides is a noble objective, but is much easier preached than practised.
S R H Hashmi
Karachi
Incompetent chief selector
Pakistan’s cricket team is playing with five openers: Babar, Rizwan, Sharjeel, Fakhar and Hafeez.
Hence, there is no middle-order batsman in the team. Muhammad Waseem, the current chief selector of Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is not capable of selecting. Waseem represented Pakistan in 18 Tests and 25 ODIs from 1996 to 2000.
He had no expectations of becoming the chief selector of Pakistan’s cricket team. Moreover, Waseem is just a name selector.
Many central contracted players are representing Pakistan solely due to cherry-picking. Some players are friends to the captain; some are sons, nephews and relatives of former cricketers.
The domestic performers are being ignored by PCB. Additionally, Waseem is unaware of the qualities of domestic performers and selected Agha for Tests against Zimbabwe.
Unfortunately, Agha was not able to play yet he was selected for ODIs without playing a single match.
Recently, Shahnawaz Dhani, the top wicket-taker of PSL 6, who performed very well in the sixth edition of PSL, was not selected for Tests. If this continues, Pakistan’s cricket team is going to end up like Pakistan’s hockey team.
SAMI RAHIM
Hub city
Increase vaccination centres
I would like to draw attention of the concerned authorities towards the less numbers of vaccination centres and vaccination capacity, through the column of your esteemed newspaper.
The emerging Covid-19 situation considerably requires to initiate more vaccination centres and enhance the vaccination capacity to vaccinate more people along the right lines, moreover, boosting health facilities at public sector hospitals for Covid-19 patients.
Presently, there are large queues in front of the Karachi Expo centre, resulting in various disputes. People are complaining about standing in a queue for 5-6 hours, while completely ignoring SOPs.
Hence, it is crucial to set up new vaccination centres while enhancing the vaccination capacity. I request the concerned authorities to look into this matter seriously before it creates any major issue.
IQRA KHANSA
Karachi
Killing innocent is rampant
A 3 year old child was recently murdered by anonymous people in Balochistan which makes one question if we are actually living in a state because a state is defined as “A nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government”. If Pakistan is really a state then where is the government?
Why are innocent people being brutally murdered indiscriminately? Is the government cognizant about these all issues? If so, then why are citizens still suffering from such crimes? If we do not raise our voices in protest against these crimes then we might undergo such activities in the future.
Additionally, we can distinguish killing as unbridled today. No doubt, this responsibility belongs to the government to ensure no criminal lives in this state with impunity.
I, therefore, humbly request the authorities to prevent such crimes from taking place and critically investigate them.
NADIR QADIR
Turbat
