Prime Minister Imran Khan has rejected the proposal of lockdown in Lahore and said that if the people are not careful in easing the lockdown, the country will have to suffer and therefore the people will have to take responsibility.
Talking to media in Lahore, PM Imran Khan said that there was an idea that we should lock down Lahore again, so I want to make it clear that lockdown means shutting down the entire economy to stop the spread of the virus.
“I have the impression from the beginning that if our country were a small country like Singapore with a population of 5 million, like Taiwan or New Zealand with a population of 3 million, then it would be very easy to lock down the country,” he said. There are rich countries with an annual income of 30, 50 thousand dollars, there is no more problem than closing them.
“I have been saying since day one that a country like ours has a population of 220 million, of which 25 per cent are below the poverty line,” he said.
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“India, Bangladesh and we have different situations. When we lock down and economic activities are disrupted, the whole burden falls on the working class and they become unemployed,” he said.
He said that there is only one thing in such countries that smart lockdown should be done wisely so that the wheel of economy would run and the poor would not be burdened and at the same time the spread of Corona would be stopped.
The Prime Minister said that it was a difficult task, running on both sides was never an easy task.
Imran Khan said that today the governor of New York which is the richest city in the world whose health budget is two to three times more than the entire budget of our country and is saying that New York’s lockdown has gone bankrupt so we Like what happened to the countries and how difficult it must have been when we came to make the budget.
“There’s no doubt that we’ve had as many deaths in three months as there have been in New York in a single day, so there were more difficult conditions and there’s no doubt that there was more pressure in their hospitals,” he said. ۔
Talking about lockdown, he said that the longer you close a country, the worse its economy is and if we locked down Pakistan on March 13 today and there is as much lockdown as there is in New York. ۔
“When New York goes bankrupt, think about how much trouble there is in a country like ours, where the revenue that was going up went down,” he said.
He said that whenever I have come to say that if you are not careful, difficult situations will come. SOPs mean that it is the responsibility of the people to be careful and if they are not careful, then this country In the end, there will be a huge loss.
The Prime Minister said that if more people get sick then there has never been such a hospital facility in our country that is why I kept saying that SOPs should be followed.
Addressing the people, he said that while we are giving you the opportunity to open a business, be careful at the same time so that there will be less pressure on the hospitals and we will be able to treat more people in the hospitals.
He said that if care was not taken and the virus started spreading, all the pressure would be on the hospitals and it has already fallen.
He said that he had sat down with Punjab Chief Minister Usman Bazdar and Health Minister Dr Asman Rashid and briefed them about Punjab and came to the conclusion that now we have to work hard but we will not lock down.
Imran Khan said that we will do specific lockdown, first trace the hotspots and close these places and maybe we will need more volunteers because we have to stop its spread.
“We have decided that the management and volunteers will work together on the SOPs,” he said.
Talking about SOPPs, he said that the first thing is a mask, now we will not allow anyone to go in public places without a mask because it is necessary.