PA's first corona-specific session: 'N' lets loose indignation at govt for 'poor steps'.

LAHORE -- The Punjab Assembly session convened on the requisition of the opposition to discuss novel coronavirus pandemic began here on Friday.

Chaired by Speaker Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, the proceedings of the first day sitting started over one and half hour late than its scheduled time of 2pm and lasted for almost the same period of time. All the assembly staff and MPAs wore face masks and gloves while no other person including the media was allowed to enter the assembly premises.

The media could cover the proceedings through the CCTV footage arrangement made outside the assembly building.

Under the formula reached at in the business advisory committee earlier, the opposition could bring in maximum 48 members and the treasury 52 daily. Total strength of the house is 371. Only those ministers attended the sitting whose departments' business was on the agenda.

The opposition questioned the 'apathetic' attitude of the government towards the disease saying why cabinet members were not assigned the duty to look after official quarantine centres set up for suspected corona patients.

'Provision of all necessary facilities at the quarantine centres is the responsibility of the government but it failed to do so as those put in quarantine there are protesting for missing facilities,' former Punjab health minister Khwaja Salman Rafiq said.

'Why the government did not depute cabinet members to overlook the quarantine centres,' he questioned.

He lamented that the overseas Pakistanis returning from abroad were not being treated in a dignified manner while being placed at various hotels for mandatory two-week quarantine period.

Lamenting that the opposition leadership was not taken on board for devising anti-virus strategy, Azma Zahid Bukhari, another N Leaguer, cautioned that virus infection among doctors and paramedical staff was on the rise as the government was failing to...