ISLAMABAD: Expressing concerns over the reports coming from various parts of the country regarding shortage of Covid-19 vaccine, major opposition parties the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Sunday accused the government of committing a `criminal negligence` and called for audit of the coronavirus funds.
PML-N president and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif asked the government to stop playing with the lives of people and make arrangements for immediate supply of vaccines keeping in view the fact that the total population of Pakistan is 220 million.
`The government must change its shallow-minded approach of ordering a few million doses and working with the vaccine supplies given to Pakistan as charity. The una-vailability of the vaccine is another proof of the government`s criminal negligence and incompetence,` the PML-N president said in a statement on the day Pakistan received another consignment of over 1.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine from China.
Mr Sharif said the opposition had repeatedly warned that failure to ensure timely vaccination would not protect the lives of people from the deadly virus. The government, he said, was erring and delaying the supply of vaccines in the same way it had handled the supply of LNG which led to massive losses. But this time round it was a matter of life and death ofPakistanis,he stressed.
Mr Sharif alleged that the `opportunists in this corrupt government` who had already bagged billions of rupees in illegal profit in sugar and flour crises were now trying to seize this opportunity as well to make money at the cost of lives. `It is unfortunate that the government is showing the most serious display of criminal negligence in the matter of people`s lives.
