| April 20, 2002 | Saturday | Safar 6, 1423 |
Silly questions!
No jobs for Punjabi graduates
A QUEER and ruthless method has been evolved by public utility agencies for fleecing the consumers already hard hit by exorbitant and ever-increasing rates of electricity, telephone, gas, water and sewerage.
Previously, the bills of such utilities used to be delivered to customers during the early dates of every month so that the salaried people, daily wagers and the fixed income groups could set their monthly budgets accordingly and pay the bills. But for sometime that practice has been changed.
The bills are now dispatched during the last days of the month due to which the common people, middle class and fixed income groups find it difficult to make the payments which results in the levy of a surcharge — at least five per cent — on account of delayed payments. This is the trick by which these agencies dupe the hard-pressed customers and try to cover the shortfall in their recovery targets.
The five per cent surcharge is no ordinary menace. It is a monstrous demon of compound interest which is added every month in progressive procession making it difficult for the poor customers to wriggle out of it.
According to rules and regulations printed on the back of the bills, a period of 14 days for payment of the bills has to be given. But this rule is ruthlessly flouted by the departments concerned who send the bills hardly a few days before the last date which adds to the miseries of the poor.
Unfortunately, there is no agency or system to check such excesses of these agencies and stop them from unfair and illegal methods of replenishment of revenue and to redress the people’s grievances.
The people at large have appealed to the government to take steps to ameliorate their suffering and direct all these agencies to stop such unfair practices forthwith.
According to insiders of the utility services, functionaries of these departments deliberately do not send bills to the consumers on time so as to “justify” retention of the so-called customer service centres, which were established with huge expenses and reduced to just issuing duplicate bills. If bills are properly mailed and delivered to the consumers, long queues in front of such centres will not be found.
Moreover, the late delivery of the bills forces the subscribers to stand for hours in front of banks for payment of their dues. In extreme weather, the consumers are forced to form queues outside selected branches of banks to pay bills. Most of them are old women and aged persons.
In order to clear bills without incurring fine, the consumers are left with only two half days as the bills are generally payable after the lunch interval. Therefore, the departments should prepare and dispatch bills well in time giving a clear 14 days notice. Moreover, proper staggering of dates of bills should be made. The practice of levy of compound interest should be abolished as a disconnection is enough to force the customers to avoid default.
Beggary has become a permanent nuisance in Faisalabad city, and the agencies concerned have miserably failed to check this menace. All the shopping plazas, markets, bazaars and other public places are plagued by beggars.
They normally visit places which are thronged by people. Nowadays, almost all the city mosques are crowded with beggars. At the time of Zohr, Asr and Maghrib prayers, the beggars encircle the mosques to get alms.
The professional beggars have earmarked their areas and get sufficient money from morning till evening. The city hospitals, bus and wagon stands and the railway station are their usual haunts. In the district courts, some beggars approach the litigants and handcuffed accused and pray for their early release. Some beggars appear on the scene mysteriously to ask for help, saying they have been robbed by swindlers. Moved by their pathetic stories, people sometimes give handsome amounts to them.
Then, some persons in rags approach customers in big plazas and narrate the time-worn story of a heroin addict father having left small children without anyone to feed them. Some burqa-clad women also appear on the scene to narrate a pathetic story and demand money to marry their young daughters.
Citizens have proposed that the government should fix monthly grants for deserving beggars to help solve the problem of beggary. The administration should eliminate professional beggars by setting up beggar homes in the city with the help of social organizations. The district administration may collect Zakat with assistance of social organizations for the rehabilitation of beggars and deserving persons. This noble task should be carried out at the national level to make the country a true Islamic state.
A LOT of people who saw President Pervez Musharraf’s press conference the other day had the impression that many of our reporters needed a lesson in intelligence and perhaps objectivity. Some of the questions asked of the general showed a lack of basic common sense. And then there were some of them — led by the chief reporter of one of the largest Urdu dailies in the country — who were acting more loyal than the king. If you go to a press conference, do you ever proceed to tell the person holding the press conference that you are a great admirer of his, and then ramble on and on with glowing words of praise? Isn’t that the job of a fan club?
This particular gentleman went as far as telling the good general that “God forbid” he would not lose the referendum. He also often asked loaded questions on the Kashmir issue and on India. There are several reasons why some members of the press should be taken to task on this account.
First, when people watch such inane questions being asked, and when they see that a journalist cannot ask a straightforward simple question (by not giving in to the temptation to hold forth on a point), they lump all journalists in the dullard category. Second, many good questions could have been asked of the president in place of the paeans that were sung in his honour ever now and then, questions that he would have readily answered. How can you expect a person to ask any remotely critical questions if he has spent the last five minutes singing praises of the president?
Part of the blame for this has to go with the information ministry and the Press Information Department because they often become very pally with reporters for reasons other than professional competence. Becoming friends with journalists might be part of their brief but they should realize that those who are likely to toe the official line or ask very government-friendly questions are not going to be all that competent and professional. The professional ones don’t need to go after the PID director or befriend, say, the information secretary to get into the corridors of powers. They speak through what they write and that’s how it should be.
Another aspect, hardly ever examined, is the curriculum and teaching quality at mass communication departments in our universities. Barring a few where teachers include competent and professional journalists, most of the instructors, even at so-called prestigious departments like at the University of the Punjab and the University of Karachi, are academics who have little experience or exposure to the way a newspaper or magazine actually works. Even at some of the best universities in the country, courses on reporting are taught by people who have never worked in a news organization. A cursory look at the curriculum of some of these universities will show just how far removed the course work is from what should be required of would-be journalists.
Unfortunately, the PID and the information ministry will hardly ever realize that it is perhaps in the government’s own interest to at least try and meet journalists who are professional and competent in their approach, assuming of course that the latter would agree to that. Right now, both these organizations, seem more busy in trying to outdo Goebbels as far as projecting the government’s achievements and referendum propaganda is concerned.
Many people who seemed to like and trust the president are now put off by what they see on PTV every day (what a good time for the Indian channels to be off). Comments like: “He’s acting just like anyone else, just like the people who he says gave us a ‘sham’ democracy. Why is he doing this? Don’t his advisors know better?” May be they don’t. — OMAR R. QURAISHI
THE annual prize distribution function of the Masud Khaddarposh Trust provided a forum to the protagonists of the Punjabi language to give vent to their feelings and lash out at those who were not doing anything for their mother tongue. As usual, the most vocal among them was Fakhr Zaman, a former chairman of the Academy of Letters and now chairman of the World Punjabi Congress, who denounced those who were providing a meagre annual grant of Rs300,000.
He pointed out that as many as eight thousand people holding master’s degrees in Punjabi were without employment. Instead of opening of food streets, he said, these young men should be provided with jobs on a priority basis. He also demanded the sacking of the bureaucrat who was opposing the publication of a Punjabi daily.
The Information and Culture Department secretary, Kamran Lashari, who was the chief guest on the occasion tried to defend the government and said it was genuinely interested in the promotion of the language and had taken many steps in that direction. As for himself, he felt happy speaking Punjabi as otherwise, he had to use English or Urdu.
The function was presided over by Malik Mairaj Khalid who lamented that talent in the Punjabi language was never recognized by any government. Propagation of Punjabi sufi poetry, he said, could go a long way in promoting love and brotherhood among the people and bring an end to violence. He said he felt prouder as patron of the Masud Khaddarposh Trust than as former prime minister or speaker. He complimented Shireen, daughter of the late Masud Khaddarposh, for keeping the flame of Punjabi alight.
THE monthly readings session of the Lahore Arts Forum could not somehow go according to the announced programme. Bano Qudsia, who had to read a story, informed Muzaffar Ghaffar of her inability to attend and so did Hina Faisal Imam who was expected to handle the English part. But then Muzaffar Ghaffar knows how to fill the gaps adequately. He invited Dr Wazir Agha for the Urdu reading and recited an English poem himself. In addition, he spotted Jocelyn Ortt-Saeed in the audience who obliged by reading a poem of here own. Muzaffar Ghaffar’s poem was rather long but its subject was interesting and the imagery exquisite.
The well known Punjabi poet, Bushra Ijaz, presented her verses that evening and received well deserved applause. Dr Wazir Agha’s inshaiya and poems were, as expected, of a high order. The arts capsule was handled by Sarwat Ali. He chose to speak on Hamaara Sangeet. He said that music was the creation of a synthetic culture but the concept was changed after partition. In India, however, music remains the oldest documented tradition. He regretted that classical music was almost dead in our country and we had given up our old musical values.
SIDDIQA Begum continues to maintain the regularity of the oldest literary magazine of the country, Adab-i-Lateef. I have just received its issues for March and April under one cover. Although she has reduced the size of the monthly by converting it into an easy-to-handle pocket size publication, the reading material contained in it remains healthy as ever.
While the February issue carried an interesting article by Prof Muhammad Asghar Farhat on the romantic poetry of Nazeer Akbarabadi, the March-April issue reproduces three prize winning articles on Ghalib’s Urdu ghazal. The writers, Rais Fatima, Shamshirul Haq Tabrez, and Shahnaz Parvin, all unknown names, seem to have done quite some research and dug out ample references to justify what they have written.
IT WAS through a one line report from a district correspondent about the burial of Ghulamus Saqlain Naqvi in his native village that I came to know of his death. And I have yet to hear of a literary reference in his memory. He was not someone to be forgotten so easily.
During his literary career spread over almost half a century, Ghulamus Saqlain Naqvi produced seven collections of short stories, a novel and two travelogues. Most of his stories are about rural life in which he talks about tilling instruments as if they were reverberating with life. The last story in his last book, Nuqtay Say Nuqtay Tak, shows how he felt after crossing the age of 79, standing on a railway platform, watching passing trains, and not knowing which one would carry him away. In a letter written to me exactly two months before his death, he complained of asthma that was bothering him as also the pain in his spine. But, he declared boldly, “I am not afraid of death.” May his soul rest in peace. — ASHFAQUE NAQVI