Actually, the title of this article should be Asad Umar, Quo vadis? Prime Minister Imran Khan, after obtaining power in 2018, gathered a large motley crew, and then following the footsteps of President John F. Kennedy called them “the best and the brightest.” From amongst this crew Asad Umar stands out. He is easily the brightest, most accomplished and professional of them all, or even any team, I would say. He was highly trained and invested-in by Exxon Chemical Pakistan Ltd, (ECPL) a subsidiary of Exxon Corporation, the then biggest business entity in the world. ECPL’s premier value was “Safety,” and closely related to this was “Employee well being.” Any employee encroaching upon “Safety” was writing his own termination letter, such was the focus on safety. During my lectures at IBA, Karachi, I keep talking highly of Asad Umar, a graduate of IBA himself until one of my students questioned me as to how effective Asad Umar has been in the procurement and the roll out of COVID vaccine?
National Command Operation Center (NCOC) is tasked with leading efforts against the spread and eradication of COVID-19. And Asad Umar, the current Federal Minister for Planning and Development chairs meetings of NCOC. From this preamble above we should be happy that we are in safe hands. Apart from my student questioning me about the effectiveness of the Minister, I was dismayed watching him in one of the talk shows. Asad Umar was asked that why wasn’t the government allowing unloading and distribution of a planeload of vaccines imported from Russia? Asad Umar’s response dismayed me: The plane arrived just two days ago and it would take another 48 or so hours for the Cabinet to approve vaccines’ release and their price structure. That means at least four days or more for the government to take a decision in an extreme emergency situation. There in one whiff he threw away his years of training on “Safety” and by extension the Pakistanis well being. No sense of urgency and a rather callous and careless approach, which any other, lesser minister could have exhibited too.
I fail to understand, how could the government not have known the purchase of vaccines, the departure of the plane from Russia, the transportation time and then the arrival of the plane at Karachi Airport? Have we seen or witnessed in our lifetimes a bigger emergency? The whole world had pre-ordered the purchase of vaccines months ago and we were happy just with the first arrival of the donated vaccines by China. Some heads must roll why wasn’t the vaccine ordered three or four months earlier. Now in end March, we are ordering vaccines when the third wave of the pandemic is on the roll. This is typical of this government’s incompetence to not even comprehend the enormity of the situation.
The government has enormous unused funds at its disposal, collected from the pharmaceutical industry over the last 45 years and deposited under the head “Central Research Fund.” Why did we not use these funds to procure vaccines?
We have some 700 pharmaceutical organizations, and some of their mother companies are the leaders in the development of the vaccines. The question again arises that if we do not have the capability of scientific research and development of vaccines, why didn’t the government negotiate with the multinational companies for the local production of vaccines through their subsidiaries? The government has enormous unused funds at its disposal, collected from the pharmaceutical industry over the last 45 years and deposited under the head “Central Research Fund.” Why did we not use these funds to procure vaccines?
The Central Research Fund (CRF), is collected by the government from all pharmaceutical companies since 1976 in the form of a tax to undertake research. It comes to an enormous amount at one per cent of gross sales. So what research has the government done to develop a vaccine or any other useful product for the people of Pakistan? Around 1918-1919 about 100 million people died because of a disease called influenza. It was also a pandemic, caused by a virus no one had heard of. It also spread rapidly. Compared to that, this virus although spread as rapidly, but is expected to be controlled, by the advances made in medical sciences. In one year of its spread less than 3 million deaths have been reported so far. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, USA, one of the best-known and most respected individuals during the COVID-19 crises is of the view that this pandemic is not going to disappear from the world. So our only chance is to get vaccinated and then keep taking precautionary measures called SOPs in Pakistan. But for that to happen, first and foremost the government and its functionaries have to wake up from their slumber. And that means procuring vaccines at any cost: beg, borrow or even steal if you like. That essentially means that we must engage the private sector, the big multinational companies who know what they are doing, and do this for a living. In USA 118 million people had been vaccinated until last week, in UK 28 million had been vaccinated until last week. So the question naturally arises where are we heading?
David Halberstam in his book “The Best and the Brightest,” writes about the Kennedy team: “The difference between intelligence and wisdom, between the abstract quickness and verbal fluency which the team exuded, and the true wisdom, which is the product of hard-won, often bitter experience. Wisdom for a few of them came after Vietnam.”
I am afraid that Prime Minister Imran Khan’s best and the brightest may also find wisdom too late, in 1923 when they have had lost all the battles that they could have won. This battle with COVID-19, they certainly could have won had they paid a little more attention and shown wisdom instead of verbal fluency. This time around they should have said “to hell with the opposition,” and concentrated on the work at hand.
