ISLAMABAD: Former special assistant to the prime minister (SAPM) Dr Zafar Mirza on Monday suggested to mediapersons to directly contact the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) for any information regarding funds spent on the procurement of Covid-19-related equipment.
He was speaking to the participants of a workshop, “Covid-19: understanding and reporting the Pandemic”, organised by the Ministry of National Health Services and Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) for health reporters. The workshop, facilitated by Dr Mirza, was aimed at improving the understanding and media reporting of Covid-19.
Majority of the journalists had queries regarding sharing of data related to the Covid-19 and spending of funds on the procurement of equipment.
As almost 24 hour-old data on the pandemic was released, Dr Mirza assured the reporters that he would contact the concerned authorities, including National Command and Operation Centre, to provide the data timely.
Former special assistant says information regarding procurements is available on authority’s website
“As far as procurement of equipment is concerned, all data regarding equipment is available on the website of NDMA and it is updated regularly. However, spending on the procurements is not uploaded on the website,” he said.
He suggested to the mediapersons to directly ask the NDMA regarding utilisation of the funds and if it was not against the policy, the data would be provided.
“Moreover, it needs to be understood that procurements are done at the federal and provincial level at the same time. So I can say that it is very difficult to get realistic data regarding procurement of equipment,” he said.
Replying to another question, Dr Mirza said during the first wave of the pandemic a project was started to train 5,000 health practitioners and so far 3,000 have been trained.
He also said there was no shortage of personal protective equipment in the public sector hospitals.
Earlier, SAPM on health Dr Faisal Sultan inaugurated the workshop and apprised the workshop participants of the challenges posed by Covid-19 and the measures taken by the government to curb the second wave of the pandemic.
He identified trends in the rise of Covid-19 wherein new cases were increasing and have almost reach 3,000 daily mark.
He spoke about additional challenges that may hamper sharing of authentic information with the citizens as well as the decision-makers. Among these, the risk of Covid-19-related misinformation and stigmatisation posed a critical challenge that would require a concerted effort on the part of all stakeholders, especially the media.
He particularly reinforced the need for careful yet timely reporting with the additional challenge of fact checking for media to pursue. He lauded the role of civil society and media for keeping the public informed about Covid-19.
Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2020
