LONDON: The United Kingdom parliamentarian has on Friday written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson asking him to explain why Pakistan was being kept on the red list banning entry to its citizens into the Kingdom, ARY News reported.
According to the UK government website, if you have been in a country or territory on the red list in the last 10 days you will “only be allowed to enter the UK if you are a British or Irish National, or you have residence rights in the UK”.
Richard Burgon, who is a British Labour Party politician and has been the Member of Parliament for Leeds, has written a letter to his PM asking him to explain his prejudice against the country that has been the case in the past as well.
The infection rate in Pakistan was much less than many countries, including India, that have been promoted to the ‘Amber list’, he said in his letter, referring to the evident bias against Pakistan.
Burgon has asked Boris Johnson to explain why the country was kept on red list and demanded the grounds of the decision and the statistics used to back the decision up.
British MPs criticise UK govt for keeping Pakistan on ‘red list’, promoting india to amber
Earlier yesterday, other British lawmakers also criticised the UK government for keeping Pakistan on its ‘red list’ whilst promoting India to the ‘amber list’ for international travel despite a clear difference in the COVID-19 situation in both countries.
The criticism was launched by some British MPs following updated travel listings issued by the UK government where Pakistan and other countries were placed on high-risk countries’ red list while India will be promoted to medium risk countries’ ‘amber list’ from August 8 along with Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
It is pertinent to mention here that Pakistan had been placed on the red list in early April and India on April 19 due to a spike in COVID-19 cases and detection of the Delta variant following the UK’s ‘traffic light’ system for international travel
