Altaf Hamid Rao Mirpur
Vetern Kashmiri rights activist and Central Deputy Secretary General of Pakistan Tehreek–e–Insaf (Welfare Wing) Basharat Saleem here on Thursday called upon the British government to immediately exclude Pakistan from her red list of the Covid-19-hit countries – since the wave of the pandemic has reduced to greater extent in Pakistan by now as compared to the time – when London had entered Islamabad in her ‘red list’.
Talking to this Correspondent, the PTI leader slammed the UK government for keeping Pakistan on its red list of countries at the latest corona pandemic travel update while removing India from it. Basharat termed the step the blatant sign of discrimination towards Pakistan on the part of London.
The UK government had placed Pakistan and India on the red list on April 2 and 19, respectively. However, in an updated list, the government announced that India, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE would be moved to the amber list from August 8.
A day earlier it was reported that UK senior health official JO Churchill has said that Pakistan was being retained on Britain’s “red list” due to the “worsening Covid-19 situation and low testing rates”.
Basharat continued that reports spoke of the fact that the British government had not ever asked for Pakistan’s Covid-19 data which was already publicly available as the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) of the government of Pakistan has a centralised database, which is updated daily by the government of Paksitan, he said adding that it was also being shared with the UK High Commission.
