Aid for Afghanistan

IT IS redeeming to know that the international community has pledged an initial sum of four billion dollars for Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Spread over five years, the aid announced by the Tokyo conference is the first concrete manifestation of the world community’s promise not to turn its back on Afghanistan after the war is over. No money is enough money, and apparently a country devastated by more than two decades of war would need a huge amount of external funding to pick up the threads of a normal socio-economic life. Nevertheless, to begin with, the four billion dollars constitute a good beginning and should help start the gigantic task of the country’s reconstruction.

Afghanistan is not altogether without natural resources. It has considerable untapped reserves of minerals, including gas. Its water resources were never fully developed, and whatever were developed were neglected or damaged during the war. Consequently, most of its orchards — a traditional source of fresh and dry fruits for the subcontinent — stood destroyed. As for industry, Afghanistan never had much of it. Nevertheless, some industry did come into existence with Soviet and American assistance. However, the Russian occupation and the resistance brought the industry to a halt. The condition worsened during the civil war between Mujahideen factions after the Soviets pulled out. Worse still, during the Taliban regime, the entrepreneurs and middle class professionals left the country on a mass scale. This brought whatever industry there was to a standstill. A similar fate befell the economic infrastructure, as roads, bridges and telecom systems fell victim to the ravages of the war. As for education, Afghanistan has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. The Taliban contributed to the country’s backwardization by closing down girls’ schools.

The reconstruction task has to begin with the setting up of a proper government machinery. This alone is a big task. In fact, Hamid Karzai told the donors that he would need a minimum of one and a half billion dollars just for establishing and running his government. The next task obviously would be to put the economic infrastructure in place. Highways, roads and bridges destroyed by the war must be rebuilt, electricity and piped water restored, and the telecom system re-established. The next step would be a well-planned and phased move towards tapping the water resources so as to bring life to Afghanistan’s agriculture and revive its once booming trade in fresh and dry fruits. As for industrialization, it is a more complex affair. It would involve both re-starting the factories now rusting and planning for new ones according to the country’s economic potential. Gas is plentiful in Afghanistan, and gas installations escaped total destruction, because everyone needed them. Gas could, thus, serve as a cheap fuel for industrial development.

Side by side, the country needs a major effort in the direction of human resource development. This essentially means spreading literacy in rural areas, setting up technical and professional colleges, and establishing institutions of higher learning. The aim should be to produce professionals and well-trained men and women able to run a modern country. Implemented carefully, and keeping in view the Afghan people’s culture and tradition, the foreign-aided development should serve to help pull the country out of its mediaeval and tribal mould and pave the way for a stable and peaceful Afghanistan. Essentially, it is a reasonably well-off population having a stake in the country that can keep Afghanistan peaceful and stable.

ISPs: question of quality

AN advertisement placed in national newspapers last week by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) about the performance and quality ratings of various Internet service providers (ISPs) seems to confirm some of the worst fears of net users in the country. As it turns out — and this is based on information that the PTA says has been provided voluntarily by the industry itself — firms providing such services have a dismal track record in terms of providing customers fast and reliable Internet use. For example, out of the 80 ISPs in the country listed by the state telecom regulator, only 14 got the highest rating for download speed, a key requirement for a fast connection. In the other important category ‘ease of access’ — basically a measure of the time taken to get connected — the performance of ISPs was worse with only five firms getting the top ranking. In other words, this means that not only is it difficult to get connected on to the Internet (because the number of people trying to connect is generally much more than the phone lines available with the ISP), once users get on, downloading data can be a time-consuming process.

It is good that the PTA has gone ahead and published these figures for the benefit of the public. However, merely publishing might not be enough. Customers want better service and they want to have Internet connections that do not take hours to download, say, a single picture. One must also remember that over the past couple of years, the government has also substantially reduced certain costs for ISPs, especially for purchasing bandwidth, which is a prerequisite for transfer of data. Unfortunately, not all these lower costs have been passed on to users and that is another matter for them to complain about. One thing that the PTA should do is to make sure that the ISPs keep adding more access lines as they take on new customers because unless they do so the quality of service will continue to deteriorate. The PTCL must also accept its guilt since all private sector firms use its infrastructure for their operations, especially data transfer. The quality of connection, which determines how fast or slow the transfer will be, depends on the quality of the technology in use. Hopefully, the PTCL’s privatization will help raise the quality of service that our ISPs provide.

Playing with lives

ONE must feel greatly concerned over a study that claims that at least 50 per cent of edibles being sold in the Lahore area are adulterated and unfit for human consumption. As the study pointed out, there is hardly any items of daily use, ranging from milk, oil and fats to spices, beverages and sweets, which on testing are not found to be substandard. In other words, the Pure Food Act is being violated with impunity. Nor is the system designed to check adulteration and punish violators free of corruption. Here one source of corruption is the lack of secrecy about samples taken for testing. Where the samples would be tested and by whom are something that no one should know. Instead, there is an inexplicable kind of “transparency” that serves to militate against the very purpose of the anti-adulteration drive. As experience shows, the unscrupulous among the manufacturers and retail sellers manage to influence the results of chemical examinations. This way, a large number of those who should be convicted manage to go scot-free. Also, most, if not all food inspectors, are open to manipulation. The result is that there are very few convictions, and those found guilty are either sentenced till the rising of the court or fined lightly. This is hardly the way to deal with a problem as serious as food adulteration.

The task requires secrecy be maintained with regard to laboratory testing. Equally important is the need for taking exemplary action against food inspectors found obliging the law’s violators. Officials also complain of an absence of modern equipment at the laboratories to do their job. The relevant law also needs to be revised, because many items are believed to be out of the purview of the Pure Food Act.