Govt has no confusion or contradiction on COVID-19 response: PM

Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that government has no confusion on COVID-19 response and since March 13 till today there is no contradiction in any of my statements.

Speaking to the budget session in the National Assembly, Prime Minister Imran Khan said that locust attacks had been declared an emergency since January 31 and the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) had been asked to provide funds for controlling locusts.

He said that locusts could be dangerous for Pakistan and steps were being taken to control them but supplies from the UK were stopped due to COVID-19.

The Prime Minister said that many things are not in our hands. Extraordinary swarms are coming from Africa while there is also a threat of locusts from Iran and India and the government is trying to overcome it.

Addressing the National Assembly, Prime Minister Imran Khan said that we have a dual problem, we have to avoid coronavirus on one side and hunger on the other side, Pakistan has slums, large populations and poor people we don’t have any comparison with New Zealand.

The Prime Minister said that there was a lot of pressure on me regarding the lockdown, there was pressure from my own cabinet, if we were like Singapore then the best thing would be curfew but the situation in Pakistan was different, each country was making its own decisions. Yes, if there was no confusion in the decisions of any country in the world, it was Pakistan.

He further said that we were on the verge of bankruptcy, it was not because of us but because of the previous leadership of this country. There was a debt of billions of rupees and we got rid of it.

The Prime Minister said that gas, electricity and other agreements were not made by the governments before us, we faced a huge burden, the primary debt has been eliminated because we have adopted austerity measures, foreign exchange reserves have increased by 3% and our rating has gone down to B3. So far, we have repaid Rs 5,000 billion in loans taken by previous governments.

Also read: Federal Minister Hammad Azhar presents the budget 2020-21