COVID-19: Chaos in distribution centre in Pakistan leaves woman dead
Islamabad/IBNS: Highlighting the poor condition of implementation of mechanism to combat COVID-19 in Pakistan, a septuagenarian woman waiting for cash handouts died outside a school in Multan region, media reports said.
Pakistani media reports said poor arrangements at Ehsaas programme disbursement centres in Faisalabad and Dera Ghazi Khan left several women injured on Friday.
While people present outside M.A. Jinnah School in Qasimpur Colony said Naziran Bibi, 70, lost her life due to chaos caused by a huge influx of people, the administration and police claimed that the woman died of cardiac arrest and poor health condition, reported Dawn News.
According to an eyewitness, 20 other women and children were injured because of the jostling outside the school and provided treatment on the spot by Rescue 1122, reported the newspaper.
She told Dawn News that more than 5,000 women and children gathered outside the centre before 9am and when the gate was opened they rushed to the counters which led to chaos.
Rescue officials said 20 people were provided treatment at the spot of the mishap.
The body of Naziran was taken to Nishtar Hospital.
Provincial minister Zubair Dreshak along with civil administration and police officials visited the site, reported Dawn News.
“There is no reality that the woman died because of jostling. In fact, she arrived at the centre at 7am and died of heart attack,” he was quoted as saying by Dawn News.
Reports of police highhandedness have emerged from different corners of the country.
In Faisalabad, police roughed up women to maintain order at the Ghulam Muhammadabad disbursement centre, Dawn News reported.
Police, however, denied the incident.
A woman, who claimed she was roughed up by policewomen, accused the administration of mismanagement.
In Dera Ghazi Khan, two women fell unconscious and suffered injuries due to chaos outside a cash disbursement centre in Jampur, sources told the Pakistan-based newspaper.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has reported 5716 COVID-19 cases so far.
96 deaths have been reported from the country.
Support Our Journalism
We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism
IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.
