On 9th April, Pakistan’s foreign office pledged to donate USD 3 million to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Coronavirus emergency fund to fight the pandemic.
A day after on 10 April India took a dig at their neighbouring country by highlighting the early commitments made by the members of SAARC saying, that the degree of seriousness of each nation can be gauged by their behaviour.
Ministry of External Affair`s spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, “it is for each SAARC Member State to decide on the timing, manner and implementation of their SAARC COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund commitments. Where India is concerned, the commitment made by the Prime Minister is today in an advanced stage of implementation”, said the reports of ZEE News.
Assistance in material and services has been held out to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. These SAARC countries have also made early commitments to the Fund. The degree of seriousness of each nation can be gauged by their behaviour, he further added.
However, Pakistan was the last of SAARC’s eight members to contribute to the emergency fund, which was created on March 15 in a video conference with the leaders of the group as a joint strategy to tackle COVID-19 in SAARC region.
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an emergency fund initially of USD 10 million. Other SAARC countries were quick to donate their shares in the emergency fund except for Pakistan.
Pakistan also didn’t join the video conference held by trade officials of the SAARC nations on 8th April.
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