PTI leader Basharat Saleem lambastes British govt. for retaining Pakistan on red list
Altaf Hamid Rao;
MIRPUR(Parliament Times): Illustrious Kashmiri rights activist and Central Deputy Secretary General of Pakistan Tehreek – e – Insaf (Welfare Wing) Basharat Saleem here on Tuesday 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’.
In an interview to our Special AJK Correspondent Altaf Hamid Rao here on Tuesday, the PTI leader slammed the UK government for keeping Pakistan on its red list of countries at the latest corona virus 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 centralized database, which is updated daily by the government of Pakistan, he said adding that it was also being shared with the UK High Commission.
The PTI leader called for the vibrant and result oriented role of several Pakistan / Kashmir origin members of the British House of Commons and house of Lords for getting Pakistan excluded from the Red-list without further loss of time – since thousands of the people belonging to UK-based Pakistani / Kashmiri Diaspora community, who had come to their home towns in Pakistan and AJK to visit their relatives, families, were waiting for exclusion of Pakistan from the red-list by the British government – since they reportedly do not have much due financial strength to bear huge sum of over British Pounds 1750/- per person for staying in the quarantine facility for stipulated 10 days on their return to Britain, he underlined.
