ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s provincial government of Punjab said on Thursday it has vaccinated 23 million people in the last one month through a mass vaccination drive as Pakistan reports a surge in coronavirus cases driven by the omicron variant.
Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, has reported 360 new infections in the last 24 hours, pushing the country’s overall positivity above 2 percent. Official data available with Arab News shows the province has so far reported 217 cases of the omicron variant, while 53 percent of eligible 81 million individuals in Punjab have been fully vaccinated.
The provincial health department started a “Reach Every Door” mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign across Punjab in October last year alongside its routine vaccination campaign. At least 14 million individuals were vaccinated during the drive.
The second phase of the mass campaign began in December and concluded this week, with authorities reporting that they administered doses to over 23 million individuals.
“These mass vaccination drives have helped us bring down the coronavirus infections, hospitalization and deaths of the patients in the province,” Hammad Raza Bukhari, a spokesperson for the Punjab Health Department, told Arab News on Thursday.
“Number of infections have been increasing for past some days, but so far there is no pressure on our health facilities,” Bukhari said.
He said the Punjab government was given a task by the National Command and Operations Center (NCOC), a federal body that leads Pakistan’s response against the pandemic, to vaccinate a total of 81 million people, saying that authorities have fully jabbed 53 percent of the target.
He added that the partial vaccination of 72 percent eligible persons had been completed.
“Our ‘Reach Every Door’ campaign has played a vital role in this success,” Imran Sikandar Baloch, Secretary Primary and Secondary Healthcare Punjab, said in a statement on Thursday.
While the mass vaccination drive has so far only been adopted by the Punjab government, the National Institute of Health plans to carry out a countrywide vaccination campaign in March this year.
Official data shows Punjab had reported 446,401 coronavirus positive cases till Wednesday while the number of active cases in the province was 3,935.
In the last 24 hours, the city of Lahore reported 320 positive cases, Rawalpindi 14, Multan nine and Faisalabad four cases.
Lahore has recorded a positivity ratio of 4 percent, Rawalpindi and Multan 2 percent, while Faisalabad reported a one percent positivity ratio over the last 24 hours.
“We can stop the spread of the virus only through vaccination and precautionary measures,” Baloch added.
Pakistan reported over 1,000 coronavirus infections in a single day on Thursday, the first time since October 14 last year that the daily cases count broke the thousand cases barrier.
The NCOC has said the country was not considering a lockdown but would ramp up vaccinations and impose further restrictions on the unvaccinated.
Punjab vaccinates 23 million people in a month in mass inoculation drive
https://arab.news/2zvjv
Punjab vaccinates 23 million people in a month in mass inoculation drive
- Provincial authorities have recorded 217 omicron positive cases so far
- Authorities have fully vaccinated 53 percent of 81 million eligible individuals in the province
Walnut tree remains ‘under arrest’ for over a century, living symbol of colonial power in Pakistan
- British officer is said to have ordered chaining of the tree in 1898, a reminder of the absolute authority and psychological control enforced under colonial rule in Khyber Pass region
- Locals and historians say the shackled tree survives as a physical memory of the Frontier Crimes Regulation era, when even nature could be punished to discipline subjects and display power
LANDI KOTAL, KHYBER: In the military cantonment of Landi Kotal, close to Pakistan’s Torkham border crossing with Afghanistan and the mouth of the historic Khyber Pass, a single walnut tree stands bound in heavy iron chains.
It has been this way for more than a century, a surreal, almost absurd monument to the power structures and punitive imagination of the British Empire’s rule in the tribal frontier.
Black shackles still brace parts of its branches, giving it the appearance of a theatrical installation. To locals, it is a wound that never fully healed, a reminder that even nature could be punished when authority wished to show dominance.
Local oral histories trace the origin of this bizarre imprisonment to 1898, when a British officer named James Squid, allegedly intoxicated, believed the tree was moving toward him and instantly ordered it arrested. Soldiers carried out the instruction and the walnut tree has never been freed since.
Muhammad Sardar, the caretaker who oversees the site today, recounted the story as it has been passed down for generations.
“This British military official at that time was drunk and thought this walnut tree was moving toward him to attack him,” he told Arab News. “The officer ordered to arrest this tree, hence the soldiers had to obey the order and arrest this tree.”
Whether the event unfolded exactly as described is impossible to verify, but historians and residents agree on what the continued chaining represented: the unquestionable authority of colonial power.
A LAW THAT COULD BIND PEOPLE — AND TREES
Landi Kotal was one of the most militarized points of the British-controlled frontier, a strategic chokepoint along the Khyber Pass, a route armies, traders and empires have used for thousands of years. To control the region, the British introduced the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), a law that denied locals the right to appeal, hire lawyers or challenge government decisions. Entire tribes could be punished for the suspected action of one member.
The chained walnut tree is often interpreted as a physical embodiment of that era: a warning made visible.
Dr. Syed Waqar Ali Shah, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Peshawar, said the symbolism was deliberate.
“It was an assertion of their [British] authority, it was a symbol of their power. Right. It’s a funny thing as well, because it’s something which was under the influence of some intoxication,” he explained.
“The officer behaved or gave orders for the imprisonment of that particular tree under the influence of some intoxicants.”
Dr. Shah continued:
“It was something which was a symbol of colonial authority, assertion of their authority, of bureaucratic diplomacy, a symbol of their bureaucratic strength and power, and maybe some cultural encounter as well.”
He added that such displays endured because “it was a cultural link between the locals and the colonial power. So it was a reflection of that. But later on, they continued with it in the presence of FCR (Frontier Crimes Regulation) and regulations like this.”
Even once the officer sobered, the chains remained.
Dr. Shah believes that was intentional: psychological messaging meant to instill conformity and fear in people living under colonial law.
“Their objective and purpose was to make it a symbol of discipline for the masses. It was an exhibition of power, a sheer exhibition of power, a symbol that if we can do this to something which was inhuman … if they can deal with a tree like this, so the general public, they should be aware that discipline is very important.”
Landi Kotal’s older residents say their fathers and grandfathers retold the story long before Pakistan existed and long before independence movements dismantled the Raj.
Usman Khan Shinwari, a 26-year-old shopkeeper, said the story continues to live in households like a family inheritance.
“My grandfather would often narrate this story of the arrested tree,” he recalled. “My grandfather would say that it shows how the then rulers were treating the locals and what our ancestors had endured.”
Over a century later, long after the end of British rule and the formal abolition of the Frontier Crimes Regulation in 2018, the walnut tree remains exactly where it was chained, part spectacle, part scar.
Tourists sometimes come to photograph it. Others stand silently before it.
But for many in Khyber, it is neither attraction nor curiosity.
It is proof that power once flowed one way only. A tree could be punished, so people learned not to resist.
