| 28 April 2004 | Wednesday | 07 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425 |
Illegality of jirga justice
Power travails
The joint offer of $800 million by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to help Pakistan undertake a five-year 'Mega City Renewal Programme' to rehabilitate Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar is encouraging.
The aim is to initiate a comprehensive process of urban renewal for these four cities which have long been in a state of decry along with their roads and basic civic services and facilities.
A worsening factor has been continuous rural migration to cities. Population in each of these cities is growing at an average annual rate of four to six per cent or more. Consequently, the cities are suffering from acute shortages of water, electricity, gas, transportation and housing, besides problems of sewerage, waste disposal and sanitation. Roads are in a very bad shape.
Absence of enough link roads, overbridges and underpasses cause enormous traffic congestions in these cities at a very high economic cost.
The inner cities of Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar are dotted with old, dilapidated houses and buildings posing a serious threat to the lives of the residents. In Karachi, for lack of any environmental cover, the land near the sea and the buildings on it are subjected to continuous erosion.
The highly polluted Ravi river is slowly eating away at the city of Lahore. No matter what you do to renew this city, the effort will be partly frustrated unless the Ravi is cleansed, which is a highly capital-intensive and hi-tech proposition.
Rawalpindi's inner city is likely soon to collapse under its own weight. The biggest problem here is sewerage and sanitation. Peshawar has suffered over the last 20 years from the impact of one of the world's biggest refugee problems to date.
In order to stop the rot in these cities before their renewal is undertaken, what is needed is a plan to discourage the continuous movement of population from the rural hinterland.
Of course, it is not possible to totally stop such an influx, but its rate could be brought down to reasonable levels if Pakistan's rural areas are provided with adequate economic opportunities and a minimum of socio-economic infrastructure on a priority basis.
Simultaneously, the proposed 'Mega City Renewal Programme' could be undertaken in earnest. The donor agencies are expected soon to hold high-level talks with the government officials to finalize an action plan for the renewal of the four cities.
The funds being promised by the multilateral agencies for this five-year programme appear to be quite sizable. But in order to make these funds yield the best possible results, there should be a well-thought-out, workable action plan in hand.
The purpose should be to identify those inadequacies which give rise to others and then make a priority list and tackle each problem one by one. Also, some restoration and rebuilding projects may require to be simultaneously implemented, which would not only keep costs under control but would also tackle the major causes of the rot all at the same time.
Next, the implementation of this plan should be efficient and orderly, with proper monitoring of the pace and quality of work and strict auditing of the expenditure.
The aim should be to keep wastage and leakages to the minimum and make the entire process cost-effective. Brick and mortar projects do lend themselves easily to corruption. This must be strictly guarded against.
Illegality of jirga justice
In a landmark judgment, the Sindh High Court has declared the holding of jirga and dispensation of justice by any such body illegal. This should come as a relief to people living in the rural hinterland, many of whom are often subjected to jirga justice based on outdated tribal values and customs - some of them truly despicable.
The judgment has come in response to a petition filed by a woman who married of her own free will and prayed that the court restrain her tribe and the local influentials from persecuting her and her husband as karo-kari.
It is encouraging that the SHC bench disposing of the petition has given an unequivocal verdict, with the learned judge observing that the West Pakistan Criminal Law (amendment) Act of 1963, under which jirga trials were permissible, has long been repealed, making dispensation of jirga justice unlawful.
The enlightened judgment should now act as a catalyst for our lawmakers, who must seize upon the lead provided by the Sindh High Court to push through a law that makes jirga justice unlawful all over the country and its practitioners liable to be punished.
Jirgas operating in rural areas have been a bane of our rural society, particularly targeting women and poorer sections of society in the form of horrific sentences passed against them - all in the name of honour.
These have entailed condoning of criminal acts such as karo-kari, vani and sawara - the first being honour killing, and the latter two entailing marrying off women forcefully to men of the aggrieved party to settle a dispute or as a recompense for murder.
Worse still, not too long ago a jirga in Meerwala Jatoi in southern Punjab ordered an innocent girl to be gang-raped by members of a powerful tribe as a form of retribution for her brother allegedly having a liaison with a girl from that tribe. Examples of inhuman jirga justice keep coming to light from time to time. It is time our lawmakers took up the issue and made appropriate laws to curb it.
Power travails
The worsening power supply situation in Karachi has resulted in people coming out on the streets protesting against the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation. Every year, with the onset of summer, demand for power increases substantially and this puts an additional load on the city's tottering transmission and distribution system.
Outages become more frequent because the system cannot cope with the increased demand. This week's protests occurred when some parts of Federal B Area were deprived of power for over three days.
With their patience running out, irate residents came out on the streets and attacked passing vehicles and public property. Though misdirected, the burst of anger is understandable.
There is no shortage of power generation capacity in the country, and with people willing to pay for it, more needs to be done to ensure uninterrupted supply. Consumers also resent the inefficient manner in which the KESC officials attend to their complaints and the long time it takes for linemen to arrive and repair even minor faults.
One wonders why, with each passing year, the utility is unable to plan ahead and make adequate arrangements to ensure that power cuts are fewer, and when they do occur, repair and restoration work is swift in peak months.
The two main reasons for frequent power failures are an outdated power transmission and distribution system and unchecked power theft, particularly in the katchi abadis, through the kunda system.
On both these fronts, very little has been done by the present KESC management. Line losses have registered only a marginal decline and stand at 40 per cent when the internationally accepted level is under 10 per cent.
The wastage of so much electricity is a national loss that needs to be checked. The ultimate sufferers of these faults and failures are the hapless power consumers, who endure frequent breakdowns, fluctuations and low voltage as the power thieves use the supply for domestic, commercial and industrial use.
All these problems need to be addressed by the KESC management without delay; otherwise law-abiding power consumers will continue to suffer needlessly in the hot summer months.