| 17 February 2004 | Tuesday | 25 Zilhaj 1424 |
The state of minorities
Need to eliminate nukes
Zia Mohyeddin show
Kalabagh dam issue
Spread of avian flu
Delayed response
New World Order
Population of vultures
Kashmir: a proposal
PTCL's reply
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A High-ranking government functionary in his address to the National Defence College in Islamabad the other day unveiled his government's 'hidden agenda' by suggesting that divisions should be made withing the provinces and the quota system should be abolished. It sounds something very serious and may well be the government's blueprint for our future.
It should be taken into account here that a large number of people consider the plans to divide the provinces as a part of the deep-rooted conspiracy to disfigure and mutilate the thousands of years of history and culture that have bonded the people together.
They think that it will 0be an attempt at robbing them of their identity and damaging the very foundations of the country. They are afraid these schemes won't end there; they will have far-reaching and catastrophic consequences.
As for the quota system, one has to look at the issue in its perspective. The system came into being following the people's long struggle against injustices and as a direct result of the years of neglect and the unfair, unequal, uneven and lopsided development policies adopted by various governments.
There would of course be no need for the quota system if the conditions were reversed and all the people in the country enjoyed equal opportunities and facilities in all the spheres of life. Unfortunately we are not there yet.
And it is not only Pakistan where a quota system is in practice. Our neighbouring country is said to have a similar policy towards less privileged people.
Even in a developed country like the United States, there is a robust "Affirmative Action Programme" for minorities and women. It is not limited to employment opportunities; it encompasses several areas like education, support to businesses owned by minorities and women, loans, federal funding for different programmes, creation of new opportunities and increasing investment in comparatively less developed areas. There are powerful oversight agencies that make it sure that the programme is followed in letter and in spirit.
If there are any complains, they should be against the half-hearted implementation of the quota system in our country. It was revealed in the Senate a few weeks ago that out of 52 grade 22 federal employees there is only one from the indigenous people of Sindh.
Has anyone from that segment of society ever been promoted beyond the position of a brigadier? There would be a thousand and one and some more examples of such disparities and inequalities.
A high official recently faulted the people of Sindh for being "incapable" of holding the offices of federal secretaries or to be promoted to the rank of general in the army. One still is waiting for the leadership and the opinion-makers in the civil society to come forward and repudiate these highly irresponsible and objectionable remarks and ask the question as to how and why it is that after 56 years of independence, the people of Sindh are still so backward.
AZIZ NAREJO
Corpus Christi, TX., USA
The state of minorities
I found myself agape upon reading a news item in Dawn (February 5) which reported Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali as having told a group of non-Muslim legislators that minorities enjoyed equal rights in Pakistan.
Either, the prime minister is unaware of the major laws of the land, or he thought that his audience lived in a state of oblivion.
Under the law, a non-Muslim Pakistani cannot seek any of the nation's top jobs such as president, prime minister and Senate chairman, in addition to a few other offices.
It is true that not every Pakistani wants or is capable of seeking these offices, yet placing such an impediment in the way of one's dreams is highly unjust and amounts to a breach of human dignity. It hardly signifies equality for the minorities.
In the past, discrimination against minorities of Pakistan has also manifested itself in another aberrant practice, i.e. separate electorate.
The existence of discriminatory feelings in the hearts and minds of one segment of population against another is an unfortunate situation. It exists elsewhere also, varying from country to country. However, the silver lining in these clouds of darkness can be found in the fact that these feelings have their genesis in ignorance. Therefore, one can strive to dismantle these mental barricades by spreading knowledge.
However, the problem takes the dimensions of a tragedy when a country's laws discriminate among the citizens on the basis of religion. Mr Jamali is not responsible for the existence of this statutory discrimination in Pakistan that was institutionalized by the Ziaul Haq regime. However, instead of pretending that it does not exist, the prime minister should try to eliminate it.
The seriousness of the matter is obvious from what transpired at the above-mentioned meeting between the prime minister and his visitors. While the prime minister spoke unhesitatingly as if the discriminatory laws did not exist in the country, his audience did not even raise a single question in response to his claim.
Obviously the victims of these laws have abandoned any hope of relief or even a sympathetic hearing from those who matter. In their hearts and minds, they must have laughed at the prime minister's naivete and simultaneously wept at their helplessness. However, their silence does not diminish the existence of the unjust status quo that needs to be jettisoned before Pakistani leaders can have the moral authority to talk about equality among all citizens of Pakistan.
SIDDIQUE MALIK
Oak Bay Place Louisville, KY., USA
Need to eliminate nukes
Today our nuclear assets have become our biggest liability. We are being made to face embarrassment both in trying to protect our hero-turned-villain and in presenting ourselves as a responsible nuclear state.
It has now come to light that Europeans are involved in the illegal supply of nuclear technology, running the underworld market of centrifuges and other nuclear material. The US and European states must thoroughly investigate this issue and arrest the culprits. Pakistan has already set an example for them.
As for the US preaching on non-proliferation of nuclear technology, the world knows that it was the United States that first used nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945.
Nuclear weapons have proliferated since then. The issue needs to be investigated right from 1945 to know from where Russia, Britain, France, China and India got their technologies.
As long as there are nuclear weapons in the world, the chances of transfer of nuclear technology cannot be ruled out. If the Big Five believe that nukes act as deterrence, every country has the right to acquire such deterrence. But that is not the case. They are weapons of mass destruction and need to be eliminated.
If we need to stop proliferation of nuclear technology, we have to eliminate all nuclear weapons within a set timeframe. It is the only way to get rid of them. Nothing short of that will work.
KHURRAM MUSTIKHAN
Karachi
Zia Mohyeddin show
In the early 1970s PTV showed its first-ever stage show hosted and compered by Zia Mohyeddin. The show was an instant hit and proved to be a trendsetter.
Zia Mohyeddin took great pains in making the stage show successful by inviting famous personalities from different walks of life. For instance, people like Josh Malihabadi, Ibne Insha, Mrs Nusrat Bhutto, Jamiluddin Aali, cricket player Saeed Ahmed and film star Mohammad Ali graced the show whose viewership was more than that of any other programme or drama of PTV.
It was the same show that threw up fresh talent like Khush Bakht Alia and helped in polishing artists like Moeen Akhtar, Khalid Abbas Dar, Naheed Siddiqi and Runa Laila.
Thus, in the history of PTV, the Zia Mohyeddin show was a grand piece of entertainment and is worth seeing again. By airing it again PTV will be paying homage to those great people who are no more in this world. One hopes PTV will not disappoint the innumerable admirers of Zia Mohyeddin and will refresh memories of its golden past.
RAFAT MAHMOOD ANSARI
Islamabad
Kalabagh dam issue
This is with reference to Syed Shahid Hussain's article on Kalabagh dam (December 29, 2003).
Construction of a dam on the Indus River near Kalabagh was under the consideration of the central government as far back as 1950. I distinctly remember that a briefing on the dam was arranged at a rest house on the bank of the Indus near Mianwali in January-February 1950.
Chaudhri Nazir Ahmed Khan and Mr Abbas Khaleeli, minister and secretary, respectively, of the ministry of industries and water and power, with technical officers of the central engineering authority, travelled from Karachi to Mianwali to attend the briefing.
Mr Abdul Majeed, chief engineer of irrigation and power of the Punjab government, explained with the help of maps and charts the salient features of the dam. From Mianwali, Chaudhri Nazir Ahmed Khan and Mr Khaleeli travelled to Lahore to discus the project with Sardar Abdul Rab Nishtar, governor of Punjab.
The rest of the history of the dam is shrouded in misery. How and why an earth-filled dam at Tarbela was preferred to a dam near Kalabagh has never been explained.
Over the years Kalabagh dam has become an explosive political issue, which Sindh, the NWFP and Balochistan have opposed through their respective assemblies and regarded it as a symbol of Punjab aggrandizement. Now even angels will dread to tread on this minefield.
SYED AFZAL HUSAIN ZAIDI
Islamabad
Spread of avian flu
The avian flu first broke out in Hong Kong in 1997. The causative agent virus H5N1 jumped into the human population when 18 cases resulted in six fatalities. The disease was only brought under control after 1.4 million chickens, ducks, geese and other birds had been culled.
This time around the first signs of an epidemic appeared in Vietnam in July 2003. In Indonesia, Marthen Malole, a virologist, suspected an outbreak of avian flu as early as August 2003.
In Thailand, the biggest exporter of chickens in Asia, the outbreak was first detected last November and covered up as cholera and bronchitis. Eight million chickens were culled, and two people suspected of having the disease died.
In the same month millions of chickens died of the avian flu in Indonesia, nonetheless the viral infection was said to be the Newcastle disease.
In the first week of February, more than 12,000 chickens were destroyed, after the bird flu, known as H7, was found at a farm in Delaware's southern Kent County, USA.
In Pakistan the avian disease hit poultry farms in and around Karachi during last November and December until about three million chickens got infected. It was treated as a routine illness.
A total of 1.2 million birds died and 0.5 million were culled by growers on their own. The outbreak has been controlled through vaccination and strict bio-security measures. The strains identified were H7 and H9 which had no similarity with H5N1.
Already, there have been confirmed flare-ups of bird flu in 10 Asian countries and territories: mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Pakistan. FAO believes that the number of chickens culled in infected countries stands at 80 million. So far 19 people have died of avian flu in Asia.
As long as an H5N1 virus stays in the host species - ducks - there is little risk of a human pandemic arising. But once that virus has infected chickens, the chances of its jumping to human beings usually through contact with chicken faeces rise considerably.
A chicken flu becomes a human flu because influenza viruses are known as shape-shifters, possessing the rare ability to swap proteins with other influenza viruses to create, essentially, new influenza viruses.
The previous human influenza pandemics in 1918 (Spanish flu, killed up to 40 million lives) and in 1968, it is believed, were the result of this sort of gene swapping or shape shift among viral strains.
Apart from chickens, the H5N1 strain may infect migratory birds. Virologist Albert Osterhaus, Erasmus University, the Netherlands, has said the prevalence of viruses in migratory birds may have been responsible for an avian influenza in the Netherlands last year that infected 80 people, killing one.
The virus responsible, H7, which was less deadly than the H5 strain, did achieve human-to-human transmission. But health experts say the human victims have caught the flu from sick chickens and the virus is not being passed among people.
The UN agencies have said that while culling animals remains the recommended action, when the disease was detected vaccination, programmes could limit the killing.
Flu vaccines are traditionally made from viruses cultured in fertilized hen eggs, but H5N1 is as lethal to the embryos inside an egg as it is to adult birds. Chief Thai government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair has told reporters that well-cooked chicken and eggs pose no danger.
DR P. NASIR
Gujrat
Delayed response
I am a resident of the Karachi Administration Society (Balouch Colony). On the night of February 12, about 11pm, all vehicular traffic bound for the Shaheed-i-Millat flyover from the Korangi Expressway was halted on account of the president's motorcade which was to pass underneath the flyover.
As a result, traffic found its way into the Karachi Administration Society seeking an alternative route to Sharea Faisal, causing traffic jams at all exit points from the society.
It was about 11pm that four armed individuals barged into my house, held us hostage at gunpoint and deprived us of our valuables. The dacoits panicked and fled when they accidentally tripped the anti-theft alarm of my car.
'15' was dialled immediately. The area police, stationed about half a kilometre away, responded but missed the dacoits by 20 minutes. I was told that they (the police) had been deployed on Sharea Faisal as a 'security measure' for the president and would have arrived sooner had it not been for the traffic jam on the way.
Had they arrived a few minutes earlier they would have had a fair chance of nabbing the dacoits whose get-away vehicle could not have gone far considering the traffic jam at the exit points.
ADNAN I. CHAUDHRY
Karachi
New World Order
Like a bull in a china shop, Israel has been ceaselessly killing Palestinians since its mission is to enslave the Palestinians. India, a strategic partner of Israel, is doing the same thing in Kashmir for keeping the Kashmiri Muslims under the heel of its serfdom.
Of late, America has set out to implement its New World Order for imposing its domination all over the globe. To begin with, it has devastated Afghanistan and Iraq and occupied them. All the remaining main countries of the Muslims are on the immediate hit-list of the US, since it looks down upon them as devil incarnate of terrorism.
America interfered in the affairs of Korea and Vietnam during the 1950s, and the former USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979 but suffered a humiliating retreat. Before that the countries subscribing to the ideology of fascism, such as Germany, Italy and Japan, caused World War II for their glorification. They faced an unprecedented defeat instead.
There the doctrine of power outlived its validity, but the nuclear countries are still denying this foregone reality. To live and let live is the only remedy to provide security to the human race. Otherwise, Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan, etc. will remain in the grip guerrilla warfare.
MIRZA GHULAM HAIDER
Multan
Population of vultures
Will anyone carefully read the news item (January 29) under the above headline and educate the general public about the hazards faced by the human population in this regard?
When the vulture, which is an omnivorous scavenger, could not survive the deleterious effects of drug residues found in the cadavers of birds and animals, what is in store for the human consumer of animal products like milk, meat and eggs obtained from livestock and poultry heavily loaded with high-potency drugs?
This disturbing information calls for a serious study by our specialists in relevant fields.
DR M. SAYEDAIN JAFFERY
Ex-president (1996-2002), Pakistan Veterinary Medical Council, Karachi
Kashmir: a proposal
With so many hurdles to cross and the complex mindsets built up over more than 50 years, I would like to make the following suggestions to solve the Kashmir dispute:
1. Let Jammu and Kashmir be given independence from both Pakistan and India.
2. Make Aga Khan president or chief executive of the newly-independent country for a minimum of 10 years.
3. His goal should be making Jammu and Kashmir another Switzerland, this time of the East. He has the background knowledge and management skills and, above all, is acceptable to a large section both in our area and in the West as a broad-minded and liberal leader.
I am confident that J & K will progress under the guidance of Aga Khan and his contributions will be in many directions - medical, finance, management, etc. It is hoped that this idea will be thoughtfully considered during the ongoing Pakistan-India talks.
SULTAN FAZELBHOY
Karachi
PTCL's reply
This refers to the letter "Complaint against PTCL" (February 12). The telephones bearing numbers 4852624, 4913322, 4913355, 4913377 and 4913388 are working at the same premises, i.e. house No. 4-E, Cosmopolitan Colony, Ansari Road, Karachi.
On investigation the telephones bearing numbers 4852624, 4913355 and 4913388 were found in working condition, while the telephones bearing numbers 4913322 and 4913377 were noisy due to low insulation and a fault in the concealed wiring on the premises of the customer.
The customer has been requested to get rectified the fault of in concealed wiring. However, the inconvenience caused to the customer is highly regretted.
ATHER JAVED SUFI
Media coordinator, PTCL HQ, Karachi
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