Staff Reporter
Millions of the low income households, particularly the private sector employees and the daily wage workers suffered from the worst economic effects of the pandemic—joblessness, closure of businesses, layoffs etc—and are left with a few opportunities of livelihood.
This has been revealed in a recent survey by the Gallup Pakistan, according to which around 2.1 million households were forced to sell out their domestic goods for the sake of food and to meet other basic needs of life.
However to mitigate their sufferings, the government launched Ehsas Emergency Cash Assistance Programme for those affected by the pandemic and so far 10.2632 million families have received a cash assistance worth Rs152.75 billion.
It has also been revealed that for daily needs and basic necessities of life, around 2.7 million households looked towards the government, different charity groups or Non-Government Organizations (NGOs).
Pakistan with 65 deaths and 2,752 positive cases in last 24 hours, on Saturday reported a total 246,351 confirmed cases, 2,156 in critical condition.
Overall, 5,123 deaths have occurred so far due to coronavirus and according to the Minister for Special Initiatives and Chairman of the Coronavirus Control Committee, Asad Umar Pakistan registered a major success in fight against virus as its patients dependence on ventilators and oxygenated beds dropped to 28%.
In a post he shared on twitter on Saturday, Asad Umar informs that on June 20, Pakistan had reported 2,969 patients on Oxygen and 546 on ventilators, however, yesterday (Friday) there are 1,762 on oxygenated beds and 394 on ventilators. This means 28% reduction in the number of critical patients.
Lockdown and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and the most importantly, people’s positive response all contributed to this success, says Asad Umar in his post. Federal Science & Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhry too announced the country was exporting face masks and hand sanitizers and earning millions of rupees in foreign exchange.
The S&T ministry is implementing a number of projects in accordance with the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan and it is because of this approach that hand sanitizers and masks that had gone missing from the market a few days earlier are now not only in abundance in local markets but they are also being exported to other countries, said Fawad Chaudhry in a tweet.
