Political blame game may deprive poor of Pakistan of free cancer treatment

Political blame game may deprive poor of Pakistan of free cancer treatment

Pakistan perhaps is the only country in the world where just to earn some political mileage, people do not hesitate even to put some of the best institutions of the county at stake.

In a recent move, threatened by the rapidly increasing popularity of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) played rather a cheap shot. Interestingly, some of its big guns, including Khawaja Asif and Chaudhry Nisar, took some
of the data proactively displayed on the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital’s (SKCH) website and blamed Imran Khan for wasting the nation’s money collected through Zakat into gambling.

What the N-league’s leaders were declaring as gambling, was actually the endowment fund investment which is made by almost every independent institution to ensure its financial sustainability and to reduce its economic and budgetary vulnerability and dependence.
The SKCH administration had not only had all the record of this investment detail, but had also shared it with the public without their asking.

Back in 1997, the PML-N had tried to spread similar propaganda about this one of the best performing hospital of the country, which culminated in depriving it of the precious money used to treat the poor patients for free, and the hospital had reached to
near closing. And it was only because of a yearlong frantic efforts on part of Imran Khan that the hospital managed to sustain itself in those financially difficult times.

This time again, although the damage was perceived to be huge, but thanks to independent media, even the television anchors bent upon earning political mileage for the N-League stood to defend the allegations and asked the N-league leaders to stay away from
harming a national level institutions whose credibility is beyond questions.

In response to these allegations, Imran Khan, along with the SKCH team, instantly tried to provide all the details of the investments and provided all the necessary proofs stating that the allegations hurled on the institution were farce. Although the act
has only added to the respect and credibility of the PTI chairperson among the masses, however, it has also exhibited the fact that Pakistani politicians are morally drained creatures who can go to any extent in order to annihilate their political rivals,
even if cost the nation a hospital which is serving it to fight against one of the most dreaded diseases for free.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=31258

Posted by Fayyaz Yaseen on Aug 20 2012. Filed under Opinion, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry