| July 29, 2002 | Monday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 18,1423 |
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Wanted: a canal
The mirror of reality: a reply
Turkish Kurds and KADEK
Overseas Pakistanis
For a few billion rupees
Some quips
Mobiles in libraries
Unethical and hazardous
Doomsday
Islam and West
Humiliating teachers
IT was with great repugnance that I read the article ‘Two teens sacrificed to tribal custom’. As long as these tribes continue to live in the stone-age, Pakistan and Pakistanis will continue to be ridiculed on the world stage and will have no chance to make any progress whatsoever.
I was surprised to read that the Nawab of Kalabagh and others had agreed to this primitive custom. Pakistan must learn to value all of its citizens, females as well as males. The word ‘sacrifice’ in the title of the article is very apt but it also shows that these girls’ lives are considered to be of no value.
That innocent girls should bear the punishment for the deeds of the guilty males is a true miscarriage of justice — a punishment that they will live with for the rest of their lives. For the truly guilty, who deserve punishment, life continues as normal.
What kind of justice is that?
DR M.N. BAIG
Alberta, Canada
I APPRECIATE Dawn for exposing the heinous crime of trading young girls as commodities in exchange for the lives of convicts in Mianwali. The paper must continue to expose crimes of this nature. This is the time to put forth maximum efforts in eliminating all the ills of the society because the world’s attention is currently focused on Pakistan. Domestic pressure had never heightened to the extent that could force the people to establish a viable civil society in the country.
I would like to suggest that all efforts should be made to ensure an exemplary punishment to all those involved in facilitating the trading of human beings as commodities and destroying lives of the young girls.
Such people included Malik Asad Khan of Kalabagh, Obaidullah Khan Shadikhel, former MNA, Malik Taj Mohammed Kund, former MPA and certain ulema.
To civilized people, these landlords, legislators and religious leaders are nothing more than brokers and there should be no room for such people in Pakistan.
MUKARRAM UDDIN
Nashville, USA
THIS is with reference to the news item ‘Girls and gold save four from gallows’.
The value of the lives of eight young girls was valued at less than that of four male convicts. Well, probably they were priced too high.
Vani is a tradition that evidently shows that much of our modern Pakistan is still in the prehistoric era, where people are least aware of their rights and the value of their lives. Much needs to be done to reform our society and its horrifying norms, before we learn it the hard way. Till the time all such inhumane injustices are eradicated from our country, especially against women, we have no right to call it an ‘Islamic republic’.
SHAFAAT ALI
Karachi
THROUGH the columns of your newspaper, we, the residents of four villages in the Yarkhun valley of Chitral district, urge President Musharraf and NWFP Governor, Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, to supply irrigation water to our area on humanitarian grounds.
Our area, consisting of Istach, Dizg, Marthing and Khruzg villages, has been suffering a drought-like situation for the past many years. As the villages are located on the right bank of the Yarkhun River, a water canal starting from the north-east of Marthing village, on which a feasibility survey has already been carried out, can solve all our water-related woes.
A few years ago, the government had sanctioned a sum of Rs4.8 million for the project, but due to the conspiracy of the Public Works Department the plan could not be executed. Before the recently-held local bodies’ elections, the people were told that work on
the project would start under the new setup, but so far no steps have been taken in this regard.
With the passage of time our economic woes have multiplied as agriculture, our main source of income, has been hit hard by water shortage.
After the completion of the canal not only will the water shortage problem of our area be resolved, also a large chunk of fertile land near our villages will become cultivable.
The people are ready to work on the project on self-help basis, but they need the technical and financial support of the government.
We also appeal to the district and tehsil Nazims to allocate funds for the project under Khushhal Pakistan and poverty alleviation programmes.
AFSARUL MULK RIZA, AND RESIDENTS
Chitral
THIS is in response to Mr Jamil Dadabhoy’s reply to my letter titled ‘The mirror of reality’ (July 20).
With due respect to his views, I think Mr Dadabhoy has rather a one-sided view of Bernard Lewis’ writings. He may have produced a sympathetic tome regarding 9/11 but he is a scholar well-known for his anti-Arab bias. Please refer to his earlier writings regarding Arab and Muslim history. They are full of racist invectives against the Arab culture and civilization.
And it is because of his views that he is regarded as an authority in the West and where his opinions are prized by the elitist establishment, and the scholars like Noam Chomsky and Edward Said, who back their intellectual work with great commitment, are not given red-carpet treatment in the self-aggrandized halls of Western opinion.
I agree with Mr Dadabhoy that it is time Muslims started analyzing their own past and failures, instead of relying on Western scholars for pointing the way forward. Let me add that a very concrete effort in this direction has been made by Tariq Ali in his latest book, The Clash of Fundamentalisms, which must be required reading for all the conscientious people of the Muslim world.
RAZA NAEEM
Lahore
PLEASE refer to the article ‘Ecevit refuses to bow out without a fight’ by Abu Saif (July 20).
In his article, Mr Saif mentions Abdullah Ocalan as a Kurdish leader and says: “(Ecevit) not too keenly disposed to granting the Kurds the right to use their Kurdish language publicly.”
First of all, I would like to inform your esteemed readers and the writer that Abdullah Ocalan was the head of the PKK (now KADEK), which has been declared as one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world by many countries and international organizations, including the USA, England, Germany, France, the EU etc. Its manifest aim is the destruction of Turkey and it uses terrorism as a means to achieve its target of dividing the country. It has been waging a campaign of terror since 1984 and it is responsible for the deaths of more than 30,000 people, most of whom were innocent civilians and civilian public servants, including citizens of Kurdish origin the KADEK purports to represent.
Secondly, there is no problem of using different dialects publicly in Turkey. Every citizen of Turkey enjoys equal rights and opportunities and has equal obligations regardless of his/her ethnic origin. There is no ban on publishing books, magazines and newspapers, including pro-KADEK publications in Kurdish language.
Thirdly, the Turkish army has no privileged status as the writer claims. In Turkey, like any other individual or institution, the army has its own role in the establishment and is performing its duties as stipulated by the constitution.
MUHSIN OZCAN
Press Attache, Turkish Embassy,
Islamabad
DURING 1988, the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation started a housing scheme for overseas Pakistanis at Raiwind Road, Lahore. It had 1,600 plots and was to be developed within two years. I got a plot allotted there in November, 1988, and paid all the required dues up to January, 1990.
I am sorry to say that even after a lapse of 14 years, the colony still lacks basic amenities of electricity and gas. The foundation has constructed a network of 11 KV/LT lines and substations but failed to get them energized from Wapda for the last many years due to some technical dispute between the two.
A few days ago, I visited the site and found that only three houses had been constructed so far. One of the residents informed me that the foundation had got a temporary supply from Wapda in its offices hundred of yards away from their houses.
This results in extremely low voltage at their premises for which they have to pay at the exorbitant rate of Rs9 per unit. They are fed up with the prevailing condition and want to sell their houses if they can find buyers.
In view of this grave situation, I request the minister of Overseas Pakistanis and WAPDA chairman to look into the matter and get the issue resolved so that thousands of overseas Pakistanis who have plots in this colony do not suffer any more and millions of rupees already spent on incomplete development are not wasted. Pakistanis working abroad are sending billions of dollars every year for improving the country’s economic conditions. The government is requested to take necessary steps to provide them with shelter for their families when they finally return home.
ABDUL AZIZ
Lahore
THOUGH there has been no respite in the rise of prices of essential commodities, the rates of profit on National Savings Schemes have been decreased by about 33 per cent within the last few years.
The recent reduction by another 15 per cent, cunningly announced outside the budget, is wholly unjustifiable because the finance minister had himself stated in his budget speech that during 2002-2003, the inflation would be 4.5 per cent against 2.6 per cent of 2001-2002.
The government of British India had enacted the Government Savings Bank Act in 1872 with the objective “to inculcate the habit of thrift among the common men”. With the negative strategies of the present foreign trained ‘experts’, even the most committed of small savers is now reluctant to save.
The fiscal policies of the finance minister have neutralized all the good work done by the president in other fields, leading to widespread anger against the government. In fact, the finance minister should have been a man from amongst the people and not from the alien elite.
No propaganda of political opponents has damaged the image of this government as much as the anti-people policies of the finance ministry. And no measure will rehabilitate this regime in public esteem as long as its economic policies are enhancing the miseries of the common man.
By this act the government may snatch a few billion rupees from millions of disabled depositors like pensioners, widows and orphans. But it would also earn the opposition of the millions affected by this step.
S.M.F. HASAN
Lahore
I HAVE always wanted to write some spicy quips based on letters to the editor and Dawn (July 22) helped me a great deal in this regard. And now the quips: “Who should be a minister?” The writer has praised President Ayub Khan who, according to him, inducted highly qualified and experienced persons as ministers.
I distinctly remember two such ministers: one was a taxi-driver from Abbottabad and the other an uneducated federal minister of education. Credit must be given where it is due.
In another letter, “Forgotten national heroes”, the writer laments that Lt-Generals Akhtar Hussain Malik and Abdul Ali Malik, both brothers, who had given a heroic performance during the 1965 war are no more remembered even on September 6. The truth is that both were declared non-Muslim through legislation, hence they lost their importance in the land of the pure.
In “A common man’s woes” the writer recounted in detail the woes of the common man in Pakistan and has come to conclude that he (the common man) is least interested in the constitutional amendments which do not mitigate his sufferings. At 73, I confess that I have had no hope of any change right from 1947 to this date and did not waste my valuable vote in all the elections held so far in the country.
“GST and the middle class” by Dr Sohail brings to the fore the inability of the middle class to meet the cost of medical treatment. I always thought that there was no such thing as a middle class in Pakistan.
K.A. WAHID BUTT
Lahore
I AM writing this with great sadness and disappointment because if educated people like doctors behave against usual norms, then what can we expect from illiterate people?
I am a doctor myself and I often go to the CPSP library situated in the Defence Housing Authority. This library has been given the name ‘Heaven of learning’ but some of us are, wittingly or unwittingly, destroying the peace and calmness of this place through mobile phones.
Mobile phones are brought inside the library but the same are left on melodious rings instead of being turned to vibrators. The owners not only receive calls but also have long chats on it inside the library. They don’t even bother to go outside. Thus the calm and quiet environment as well as concentration of so many others who are seated near them is destroyed.
I want the concerned authorities to take necessary action, and appeal to those who have cell phones to turn off ringers and put the phones on the vibrator mode while in the library.
DR G.M. AWAN
Karachi
THE editorial ‘Unethical and hazardous’ (Dawn, July 23) based on the statement of the secretary-general of PMA has only highlighted one form of unethical practice, which is becoming a norm in the medical profession.
I know of a recently promoted professor of gynaecology at Liaquat University of Medical Sciences, Jamshoro, who tells her patients on their first visit that she will only do C-section delivery and if the patient is prepared for that she will proceed.
Another gynaecology professor is so busy in her practice (or malpractice) that she often forgets surgical instruments (scissors, artery forceps and cotton swabs) in the patient’s abdominal cavities. She has been reported against in the media and after various inquiries has gone scot-free.
Another senior-most professor of gynae, who is a multimillionaire several times and is now retired, starts her laprascopic operations after Fajar prayers in various private hospitals in the city.
The other glaring scandal is the appendectomies are being unnecessarily performed by the general surgeons. Then there is proliferation of ultrasonologists in every nook and corner of the city, with hordes of X-ray machines installed in and around the main doctor’s lane without any protection from radiation to the staff, doctors and patients.
Then there are those various fraud ‘diagnostic centres’ which don’t have any lab/ray or other facility of their own, but function in connivance with pathological laboratories on percentage basis. These labs are owned by professors of Liaquat Medical University and even lab technicians. This goes on with impunity without anybody taking any action. The poor public suffers in silence at the hands of these so-called messiahs.
DR ABDULLAH JAN PATHAN
Hyderabad
WAY back in 1966, as an engineering student, I was given the project to convert a diesel engine (then already running on a century-old technology) to run on natural gas. At around the same time, students of MIT, USA, were told to design an effective system to knock out a comet which would hit the earth in a year’s time.
The system designed by the students was judged to be 95 per cent effective by scientists at the time.
Now that an asteroid is headed towards the earth, perhaps the sole superpower will channel its expertise to save the planet from destruction.
SHAKIR LAKHANI
Karachi
THIS is with reference to ‘Correcting some misconceptions’ (Encounter, July 20). Most of the so-called orientalists of the West have nothing but venom against Islam, albeit in the garb of exposition of and research on Islamic Ideology. How inimical the West is towards Islam has been ably but partially exemplified by Dr Zeba. I could add hundreds of quotations from various surahs, but I will confine my thoughts to the hope that the Muslims all over the world wake up from their dogmatic slumber before it’s too late.
PROF RAZIA YAQUB
Karachi
THE decision of the Punjab government to privatize schools nationalized in the 1970s has caused unrest among the teachers. That the government intends to improve the quality of education is appreciable, however, the way it is enforcing its decision is questionable.
A peaceful demonstration of teachers, a few days ago, was not allowed by the police. They were baton-charged leaving many of them, including women teachers, injured, before they could actually start their peaceful demonstration.
Instead of resolving the lingering issue of the suspension of ad hoc teachers, the government has opened another front against the teachers who are already facing economic problems.
We should not forget that these teachers are among the lower and lower-middle classes of our society and a large number of them have no source of income other than from teaching.
They should not be humiliated and beaten up by the police.
The teachers fear that most of them would be fired and the parents fear a rise in tuition fees after denationalization of the schools.
Many political and religious organizations, student unions and parents have supported the teachers’ stance and have demanded of the government to withdraw its decision.
If the government must decide to privatize educational institutions, a better way is to clearly spell out the objectives relating to education development and then implement the decision gradually after ensuring the interests of the teachers.
A wrong decision of the 1970s cannot be rectified by another hastily crafted decision, which would only increase the number of unemployed in our society.
DAWOOD AHMAD
Lahore
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