| 28 February 2004 | Saturday | 07 Muharram 1425 |
What price the Indian tour?
Crumbling national heritage
Pitfalls of power
A teacher's death
Moratorium on opening dental colleges
Insufficient postal facilities
Small investors and old NICs
DHA Girls College
PMDC's new move
President's visit to Karachi
Need for a school
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The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad Elbaradei, has recently urged the P-5 - the United States, Britain, Russia, France and China - to take prompt steps towards nuclear disarmament and thereby revitalize the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by adhering to its constitution.
Based on the UN General Assembly resolution of November 19, 1965, the NPT was signed on July 1, 1968, and it entered into force on March 5, 1970. Central to the treaty is the concession of the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) to refrain from acquiring nuclear technology and, in exchange, the nuclear weapon states (NWS) agree to make progress on nuclear disarmament and provide unrestricted access to nuclear energy for non-military uses.
Unfortunately, the treaty was very weak in the commitment to disarmament as it emerged from the negotiations of the Cold War period where superpowers' interests were apparently held supreme. Over the past three decades, even this commitment has not been fulfilled by the nuclear weapon states.
But the bargain remains enshrined in an international treaty. In fact, it is the only treaty that recognizes a category of states as nuclear weapon states, thereby legitimizing the existence of this category of weapons of mass destruction.
Yet the ultimate shift was to be witnessed in the indefinite extension of the NPT on May 12, 1995, when the NWS actively supported by the so-called NNWS of Europe avoided any firm commitment to nuclear disarmament.
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for signature in 1996. Ratification of the treaty by the 44 nuclear weapons-capable states is required before the treaty can enter into force.
At present, France and the United Kingdom, only two of the five mega nuclear states, have ratified the treaty, while the two de facto nuclear states - India and Pakistan - unanimously yet cautiously refuse to sign both the NPT and the CTBT.
The CTBT received a further setback in October 1999, when the US Senate failed to ratify the document. Preventing further nuclear weapons development is the clear aim of the CTBT, but the US, Russia and other nuclear weapon states proceed to develop new nuclear weapons using computer simulations and subcritical underground nuclear testing.
For the utopian dreamers of a global nuclear control regime, the challenge to denuclearize approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads still seems stymieing, surely because the nuclear apartheid of the powerful nuclear states reflects great contradictions between their precepts and practices.
Paradoxically, Europe under US captaincy stood firmly for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons during the past five decades. But it has done precious little to press for nuclear disarmament after the end of Cold War.
This is even more marked in the case of states that are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) which defines these states legalistically or technically "non-nuclear" rather than practically.
S. Q. AFZAL RIZVI
Karachi
What price the Indian tour?
Not a day passes without a new condition being attached by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) with regard to the Indian team's forthcoming tour to Pakistan.
First it was the matter of venues. No country has ever been dictated to like Pakistan on where matches could be played or not. In accepting the BCCI's direction not to hold Test matches in Karachi and Peshawar, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has indirectly fallen in line with the BCCI's contention that the situation in those cities is not safe. Should the cricket board of another country have the right to determine on behalf of the PCB which city is safe and which is not to play a cricket match?
If Karachi was considered safe to stage a Test match against Bangladesh, then surely it should be safe for a Test match against any country. It would be interesting to know the basis on which these foreign cricket boards are making decisions about the state of security in the cities of Pakistan. Do they know something that we don't?
Just as the hullabaloo about the choice of the cities seems to be dying down, the BCCI has warned that the tour will be called off unconditionally and without compensation for lost revenue if even a single stone was thrown at the Indian players at any of the venues.
This latest warning is like adding insult to injury. It seems that the BCCI is bent on finding out how desperate the PCB and Pakistan are to hold the tour and to what extent they are ready to be subjugated.
In spite of the best efforts, bottle- and stone- throwing have unfortunately become an integral part of cricket matches and happens all over the world. The BCCI needs to only look at the number of matches in India itself where not only bottle- and stone-throwing but fires have been also started in protest by spectators. Was ever a tour called off because of such incidents? Why is then BCCI now threatening to call off the tour of Pakistan in case of bottle- or stone-throwing?
We have all been waiting in earnest for the resumption of matches between the cricket teams of India and Pakistan. But are we, as a nation, willing to pay the ever-increasing price that the BCCI is demanding for it?
TARIQ RAZA
Jubail, Saudi Arabia
Crumbling national heritage
If not for all, at least for some, it may be a matter of great concern that Mohenjodaro, arguably the single most important archaeological site in the country, is facing gross neglect by the authorities.
A report in this newspaper on February 23 said that a portion of the eastern wall of the first street (main avenue) of this "World Heritage Site" had recently collapsed. Other reports say that since the excavation of the site over eight decades ago, scores of the walls and the pillars have disappeared and many more have collapsed.
A couple of years back, an engineer had surveyed the site and identified some 93 original walls, which were leaning. Three of them have fallen since while others are vulnerable to environmental conditions and the fast increasing salt activity.
The neglect is evident from the fact that the 26 tubewells installed to control the underground water ceased operation in 1989 and the scientific laboratory set up at the site is without any chemist after the transfer of one to Lahore some time back.
According to archaeological experts, the recent collapse of the portion of the wall is a big loss because the wall located in the DKG area was unique in the entire Indus Valley civilization sites. Reports further say that this pre-historic site is facing a danger and structures can collapse at any time as the last year's rains developed fissures, gullies, cracks, crevices and ditches and de-shaped their originality.
The site curator is said to have informed the southern region director of the department of archaeology regarding the collapse of the eastern wall and suggested that the department should immediately launch an action to save the structures from further damage. No response is reported yet from the higher-ups of the department.
One is inclined to ask: is it possible for a people used to sinking pride to take care of their crumbling national heritage?
AZIZ NAREJO
Corpus Christi, TX., USA
Pitfalls of power
A couple of years ago the distinguished prime minister of Britain wistfully went on record that his country needed to return to basic values to recapture its status and stature as a state given to justice at home and peace abroad.
Having seen some enviable facets of British ethos, I am profoundly shocked to read that its official intelligence agency with the knowledge of the British government should have ventured to bug the office of the United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, Pitifully his is very different from the culture presided over by the Baldwins and Ramsay MacDonalds.
Similarly, what we have seen and continue to see of the histrionic convolutions embedded in the dissonant utterances and actions of responsible functionaries of the 'sole superpower' is certainly nowhere near the Wilsonian idealism and catching personal rectitude of Henry L. Stimson.
It is reported that the former US secretary of state once returned an intercepted telegram addressed to an embassy in Washington DC and put on his desk with the cryptic noting: "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail."
Unhappily, one cannot escape the frightening apprehension, with all the fissile material, treaty bound or not, but bristling around us, that Tony Blair may at least once be right that to stem the movement of the world to horrific self-destruction a return to basic values may indeed be imperative.
To me the first international step in this direction would be to convene the moribund Disarmament Conference at Geneva.
M.J. AS'AD
Karachi
A teacher's death
The reported suicidal death of Karachi's Professor M. B. Jamali is tragic (Dawn, February 25). Apparently he was suffering from loneliness and depression. His death also throws some light on the plight of the elderly in our society.
During the last 50 years our social set up has changed dramatically. The joint family system has gone and family units tend to live independently now. Sometimes they are even reluctant to share their independence with their parents.
Even in those families where the parents live with their children, they are often neglected because children do not have enough time to spend with them. Sometimes they are considered as a financial burden.
Then there is the phenomenon of migration. There are numerous families where all the offsring have shifted abroad, leaving their elderly parents at the mercy of the servants for their physical and medical needs.
We seem to be oblivious of the problems faced by the elderly in our society. Geriatrics, which is a well established branch of medicine in the western world, does not even exist in Pakistan.
It is time we recognized that a problem exists, and elderly people do have special needs and require our attention. There is an urgent need to establish special homes and places to cater for their physical, social and medical needs.
DR SHAHAB JAVID
Karachi
Moratorium on opening dental colleges
This is with reference to the news report "Interactive curriculum's for medical institutions" (February 13). It has been reported that Professor Sultan Farooqui, president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP), informed the journalists present that "a moratorium has been imposed on the opening of new dental colleges. This is due to a shortage of specialist dentists in the country."
Attention is drawn to another news item appearing in your paper (January 17) under the headline "2 more colleges to be part of Dow varsity". Talking to Dawn, Dow University Vice-Chancellor Dr Masood Hameed Khan said he had also identified a piece of land for the establishment of a dentistry college in the city.
The heads of these important institutions responsible for medical education have given out the above information. It remains to be seen how this controversial and contradictory decisions will be implemented.
For 45 years since the creation of Pakistan in 1947, there had been no dental college in Karachi. There were five dental colleges in the country, one each in Lahore, Multan, Peshawar, Quetta and Jamshoro.
On the induction of the civilian government in 1988, I made efforts to ensure that the federal government at the JPMC or the provincial government at the Dow/Civil Hospital establish a dental college in Karachi. Despite detailed proposals presented and finances pledged by private sources, this venture was not taken up.
In its health policy of 1989 the government opened medical and dental education to the private sector. I was facilitated to establish the Fatima Jinnah Dental College in the private sector in 1992, as a pioneer institution of its kind, after receiving an NOC and approval from the federal ministry of health, the PMDC and the University of Karachi.
The Baqai Medical College and the Medical College of the KMC also added dental colleges to become Baqai Medical & Dental College and Karachi Medical & Dental College.
Then the floodgates were opened and at present there are seven dental colleges in Karachi alone. Professor S. M. Rab, while he was Sindh minister of health in the late '90s, made unsuccessful efforts to have a dental section attached to the DMC and the Civil Hospital, Karachi, in the public sector.
The administrations of 18 dental colleges, both in public and in private sector universities, the PMDC and other medical education regulatory bodies are grappling with the situation of severe shortage of post-graduate faculty in the country. It will be interesting to note whether a moratorium on the establishment of new dental colleges can be imposed on government-run universities, as it will definitely be done in the private sector.
Is it not too late in the day for the DMC to wake up to a situation that existed a decade ago with the addition of the eight dental colleges in Karachi?
DR S. BAQAR ASKARY Chief Executive/Head of the Institute, Founder Trustee,
Fatima Jinnah Dental College & Hospital Trust, Karachi
Insufficient postal facilities
There is only one departmental post office in Block-14 of Karachi's Gulistan-i-Jauhar to cater to the needs of the area people. Besides being located in a residential area instead of on a main road, it has no facility for sending mails by the urgent mail service (UMS), nor does it have any franking machine.
Two or so years back the Al'Karam Booksellers and Stationers in Block-18 were allowed to have a franchise post office which provided both the registry and the UMS. It was a very welcome facility arranged by the department, as people who could not locate the departmental post office could have their needs served by the franchise post office.
However, for five or so months the authorities have curtailed the facilities that the franchise post office was providing not only to the residents of Block 18 but also to entire Gulistan-i-Jauhar. The withdrawal of the facilities of registry of parcels, post and UMS has been causing a great inconvenience to the people.
The authorities concerned are requested to look into the matter and see that the facilities are restored at the earliest to facilitate the public at large.
M. SHAFIQUE AHMED
Karachi
Small investors and old NICs
Small investors have once again been deprived of an opportunity to earn some benefits that were available to them from the stock market.
The National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) has recently cancelled old national identity cards, and following this banks have refused to accept share applications of new flotation/companies privatized through stock exchanges.
The question arises: has Nadra issued computerized NICs to all applicants in the country? If not, then why has it cancelled old NICs thereby depriving thousand of small investors of some benefits which were available to them?
I request the SBP governor and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan to look into the matter and advise the banks to accept share applications on old NICs as well.
SHER ALI
Karachi
DHA Girls College
The DHA Girls College is one of the best colleges in Karachi, with the only drawback that the parents are forced to pay the monthly fee in the only designated Prime Bank Ltd in Phase I, DHA, and because of this the parents living in far-flung areas have to pay the cost of transport.
Will the relevant authorities do something in this regard?
R. ISMAIL
Karachi
PMDC's new move
On Saturday, after a gap of one week, I again visited the PMDC regional office in Karachi for renewal of my registration. This time I was shocked to see a white paper on the office wall with "Saturday Closed" written on it.
When I went to the office on the next working day and asked the staff there if any official notice had been issued as regards the closure of the office on Saturdays, I was told: "This is a regional office, a branch office, and it doesn't happen like that here."
I request the Pakistan Medical & Dental Council to let me know how its regional offices work.
DR ABBAS NAQVI
Fatima Jinnah Dental College, Karachi
President's visit to Karachi
The president is most welcome to visit Karachi but should not disturb and upset the citizens' daily routine. During his last visit to Karachi from February 13 to 16 the general public was put to great inconveniences.
Please take note of the following:
1. A man who suffered a heart attack in Salalah Apts opposite the Army House could not be taken to the National Institute of Cardio-Vascular Diseases as the ambulance carrying him could not enter that area. Large water tankers had already blocked the roads leading to the hospital.
2. The area's residents were not allowed to park their cars near their houses.
3. Wedding preparations were all upset. A bride and her entourage had to walk across the next road to get into their cars.
4. The labourers working for water tankers went without salaries for four days.
I trust the president will read this letter in good faith and be more considerate.
ASRAF ALI KHAN
Karachi
Need for a school
I want to draw the attention of the government to a serious problem in my village Marri Kamboh in Okara district.
There was once a girls' primary school here, but it was demolished due to the carelessness of the education department as well as the landlords. Now the population of the village has become 10,000 but the girls' primary school is no more.
There is not a single girl here who has studied at the primary level. The question is: do we not have the right to get an education? Have we been left at the mercy of landlords? Who will rid us of our ignorance and illiteracy?
I appeal to the government and to those who are capable of setting up a school to help build one for us.
MUHAMMAD AKRAM SHAD
Okara
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