The coronavirus pandemic is only going from bad to worse in Pakistan and sadly the way members of the Government have been acting isn’t exactly confidence inducing either. Just the other day, WHO released a letter in which it advised Pakistan to impose an “intermittent lockdown” and Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health, Dr. Zafar Mirza responded by basically rejecting the idea put forth by the top healthcare specialists in the world. Even the Prime Minister himself has got the harsh end of cirticism for first calling the COVID-19 disease a “flu” and then accusing the Pakistani population for not taking it seriously because, in his words, people think of it as just a “flu”.

Following this chain of rather hilariously silly remarks, the Minister of State for Climate Change Zartaj Gul also commented about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic

Ms. Gul was heard saying that media has reported when air quality was not good recently but should also report how it has been one of the best recently and it has been due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic which has been a huge benefit for her ministry.

“Following the lockdown imposed to counter the spread of coronavirus, air pollution reduced greatly as the industries were closed and the use of transportation was minimal”, said Ms. Gul.

She said that the coronavirus benefitted the Ministry of Climate Change as the countrywide lockdown improved the Air Quality Index (AQI) of Pakistan. She also added “I hope that coronavirus lockdown SOPs will be followed for next five years. The AQI of Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi has enhanced to a great extent. The virus has benefitted my ministry.”

Naturally, such an… erm interesting statement obviously gave reason for people to troll Zartaj Gul for her remarks about coronavirus

This isn’t even the first time that Ms. Gul has made statements that have led people to question her competence to lead one of the most important ministries i.e. the Climate Change Ministry

In the past she made some questionable comments when she said that our Prime Minister, Imran Khan was responsible for the good weather and we should thank him for the rain. She also basically called the Lahore smog fake news. She was also involved in getting her sister appointed as the director of the National Counter Terrorism Authority, leading to criticism over her being involved in nepotism.

Comments like this need to be made with very carefully chosen words, especially coming from one of the top leaders of this country. During a pandemic where a Pakistani is dying every 10 minutes, calling that same pandemic a “huge benefit” is rather tone deaf. Here’s hoping that our leadership can learn to be better, at least in their choice of words.