| 20 June 2004 | Sunday | 01 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425 |
Medical universities
Preventing road accidents
Aziz Bhatti Park a shambles
'An unfair levy'
Northern Ireland, Abu Ghraib and Karachi
Be Pakistani, buy Pakistani?
DHA, Clifton Cantonment Board
Police official on the run
Sale of WMDs
Neglect of old pensioners
Palestinian state
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Of late the tendency of deciding crimes committed by persons through jirgas and other modes by the feudal lords, sardars and zamindars has increased, though such crimes are sub judice before the courts of law. The Sindh High Court, Sukkur bench, in its landmark judgment has declared such jirgas as a parallel judicial system, unlawful and unconstitutional.
Feudal lords and sardars have taken upon themselves to oppose the judgment. Therefore, they are still holding jirgas to maintain their supremacy and control over the poor masses, without realizing that by doing so they are committing offences of contempt of court, PPC and other laws.
In the past, tribal sardars used to decide such crimes through jirgas and other modes. Parliament took up this matter in 1976 by passing a law, namely "System of Sardari (Abolition) Act 1976 (Act XL of 1976)," through which it has abolished the sardari system throughout Pakistan. The preamble of the act, which is its essence, is worth reading:
"Whereas, the system of sardari, prevalent in certain parts of Pakistan, is the worst remnant of the oppressive of feudal and tribal system which, being and derogatory to human dignity and freedom, is repugnant to the spirit of democracy and equality as enunciated by Islam and enshrined in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and oppose to the economic advancement of the people;"
Section 3 of the act says:
"Abolition of system of sardari: Notwithstanding any custom or usage, as from the commencement of this Act, the system of sardari shall stand abolished and no person shall:
(a) exercise any judicial powers not expressly conferred on him by or under any law for the time being in force; or
(b) maintain any private jail; or
(c) save as provided in the code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 (Act V of 1898), or any other law for the time being in force, arrest or keep in custody any person; or
(d) take free labour from any person or compel any person to do labour against his will; or
(e) demand or receive, by reason of being or having been a sardar, any tribute or any other payment, whether in cash or in kind; or
(f) be in possession of, or drive any benefit from, any land belonging to a tribe, by reason of being of having been a sardar of the tribe."
The contravention of the above section has been made punishable under Section 5 of the act, which may extend to three years.
In spite of the ban on the sardari system and the ban on sardars to decide crimes committed by any person and its contravention being made an offence, the police are keeping quiet and no action is being taken against such sardars.
The police do not act probably for the reasons that sardars are in the government of the day. When the police fail to perform their legal duties, then the people will look towards the judiciary to take cognizance of the matter through magistrates.
The magistrates have powers to take cognizance even on the basis of personal information, which they receive through the media. This is the right time when the judiciary can act by booking people who hold jirgas.
Answers to Mr Ameer Bhutto's letters (May 27, June 3) are available in the preamble of Act XL of 1976. First, he should get the above enactment repealed, and only then he can make his arguments in favour of the jirga and sardari system.
MUNIR AHMED
Karachi
Medical universities
This is with reference to the letter by Dr Hussain Bux Kolachi on the above subject (June 8).
I would like to inform him that the Aga Khan University (AKU) is not a "medical university", and I would advise him to go on the internet (akdn.org) and read the AKU's original charter which will give him more information which he should know as associate professor of community medicine at the first medical university of Pakistan.
The Pakistan Medical Association is not against any private or public institute if they are extending quality healthcare with quality medical education. Unfortunately, a majority of private sector medical colleges and universities provide wrong information to parents and students. The PMA also believes that owners of private institutes who have benefited from the relaxation of rules by the PMDC should be investigated.
There are hundreds of medical schools all over the world that produce good doctors and have a great research tradition. They do not need the status of a medical university to do research and provide quality medical education. It is also interesting to note that billions of rupees are earmarked for construction of buildings and everybody knows in Pakistan as to who usually benefits from this.
In Pakistan vested interests are active to create medical universities to get benefits by all possible means. In this connection, one can mention appointments at Liaquat, Dow and the Lahore University of Health Sciences.
In a country where basic health units, rural health centres and taluka hospitals are starved of resources and poor men and women are dying because of unavailability of primary healthcare, only a highly qualified and foreign trained teacher can justify the wastage of billions of rupees on launching medical universities.
DR SHERSHAH SYED
PMA, Karachi
Preventing road accidents
The editorial "Road tragedy near Abbottabad" (June 9) is befitting inasmuch as it criticizes the pathetic attitude of the authorities towards the victims of road accidents which have become quite common. Every morning we start with headlines announcing some dreadful new accident taking many innocent lives. This is not restricted to the Northern Areas but the plains of Punjab and Sindh are equally prone to highway accidents. The road accident casualty figures for the year 2000 for Pakistan, China and India should be an eye-opener: Pakistan 4,500, China 250 and India 450.
The root cause identified and suggestions given to control these accidents are good, but more is needed if we have to make our roads safe. Besides checking overloading and ensuring road-worthiness of vehicles for bringing order to the unruly system of transport, it should be made incumbent on drivers and crew members to wear proper outfits and display identity badges with names and numbers.
Licences should be given according to traffic rules and matriculation should be fixed as the minimum education qualification for drivers. Every vehicle should be periodically tested to determine its road-worthiness and those not qualifying should not be allowed on the roads. Observance of traffic rules should be strictly ensured, and if a driver once causes a fatal accident killing innocent people, he should be blacklisted, his licence should be permanently cancelled and his name notified throughout the country, besides, of course, being dealt with under the PPC.
Unless traffic laws are promulgated and followed evenhandedly and strictly, accidents will continue to occur and newspaper editorials continue to be written.
MANZOOR H. KURESHI
Karachi
Aziz Bhatti Park a shambles
Aziz Bhatti Shaheed Park in Gulshan-i-lqbal, Karachi, which remained a major attraction for over two decades because of its distinctive features and leisure facilities such as boat rides in the lake, exquisite flower beds and well-manicured lawns, is a shambles. Neglect on the part of the city/town administration, shortage of water, the absence of management and upkeep and the shortage of funds are a few reasons for this sorry state of affairs.
Sections of the press have reported that the city/town administration is now preparing to hand over a part of the park to a private sector enterprise on a BOT basis. This approach has been adopted apparently to shed part of the responsibility to another stakeholder.
The move is wrong on many grounds. Private parties are likely to use this property for profiteering. Entry to the park may be restricted. Any private party which will accept this proposal is likely to bring larger areas under its control. Land use violations are also not a remote possibility.
It is amusing to note that whenever town administrations find any difficulty in managing a certain space or facility, they hand it over try to the private sector.
Maintenance of parks and recreational spaces is a prime responsibility of the CDGK/town administrations. If contractually delivered to commercial operators, neighbourhood residents shall be deprived of their rightful access to a green space essentially allocated for their recreation.
The authorities concerned are requested to review the decision.
NOMAN AHMED
Karachi
'An unfair levy'
This refers to your editorial "An unfair levy" (June 17). For your readers' benefit, PTV would like to state a few facts.
Nearly 12 million households in Pakistan own TV sets. The total bid for TV licence collection for the current financial year is 2.6 million. The licences issued through contractors has just reached the figure of 1.6 million as we approach the end of the financial year. Only 10 per cent of the TV set owners pay the TV licence fee.
There have been complaints of fake licences being peddled by unscrupulous elements. Prosecution of offenders is almost impossible given the nature of the law on the subject.
PTV has to meet a number of obligations which have no commercial value. To provide people in remote areas with access to the electronic media, it has to operate nearly four dozen TV boosters, costing Rs500 million. The government does not meet its recurring cost of operating and running. PTV's total current expenditure of Rs3.3 billion is met by it through advertising revenue and partly through TV licence fees.
Given the increasing cost of transmission and a growing competition from private channels, PTV must keep itself financially afloat without burdening on the government.
BANARAS KHAN
Director, Marketing, PTV, Islamabad
Northern Ireland, Abu Ghraib and Karachi
Please refer to Irish Republican leader Gerry Adam's evocative narration of Operation Demetrius in which he was victimized in extra-judicial treatment by the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland. ("Abu Ghraib images are familiar to Irish Republicans", Dawn,, June 6).
Reading his story and comparing his interrogation at Belfast with those of Iraqi prisoners, I along with other MQM legislators and hundreds of its office-bearers and workers must have been reminded of our Palace Barrack and our Abu Ghraib in 1992, 1994 and 1999 at Karachi.
When I was arrested in 1992, they put a desperate drug addict in my cell. The police had no need to wake me up at night; he was doing their job by begging, shrieking and demanding heroin from me throughout the night. In the morning someone fulfilled his demand. He went into a sound sleep, while I was sent for interrogation.
With eyes covered with a smelly rag, I was put in a vehicle and was taken to what perhaps was an office. There was interrogation, accompanied with a lot of kicking and targeting the mid-section of my body, hitting the head against the wall and making me stand with hands up in the air.
One drawback of being blindfolded is that you never know when the next kick or punch will hit you, and where. Questions were repeated and later on I was told that this was a civilized interrogation. My agony ended when the speaker issued orders summoning me to the parliament's office at Islamabad.
During the arrests of 1994, we were taken to the CIA centres at Clifton and Saddar. This time too the degree of interrogation was not dissimilar to the previous one. In fact, it was of a greater intensity which crossed the previous "civilized way."
MQM workers underwent the most barbaric torture. Their finger nails were plucked by pliers. Cigarette-butts were used to singe sensitive parts of the body. Teeth were broken with hammers. An MQM worker was asked to sit naked over a cola bottle. Spreadeagling was common.
When in the Central Prison, some jail wardens told us that three MQM workers had been taken out for interrogation, but the next day's evening papers reported their death in a police encounter.
My arrest in 1999 was for a violation of Section 144, then came a murder case and then more cases - the final tally was 93, including 25 murders. This was great mental torture. One could not sleep worrying all the time about how lawyers would be arranged, how bail would be managed and how sureties would be deposited. I think this was a bigger torture than the physical one.
Cruel investigation techniques are not different in the hands of those who belong to the most democratic and most civilized societies (the US/UK) or hail from the world's largest democracy (India) or belong to our constitutionally Islamic society. The way of treating and dealing with politicians has varied. Preferential behaviour is visible towards the religious right. That is the main reason that whenever the state has launched an operation, it has always been against parties such as the PPP, MQM, the ANP and the nationalists of Sindh and Balochistan.
KUNWAR KHALID YUNUS
Islamabad
Be Pakistani, buy Pakistani?
A tender notice issued by the Prime Minister's Secretariat invites firms to supply three-piece men's dress suits and Safari suits made of imported cloth. It is really distressing to note that the Prime Minister's Staff want to don apparel manufactured from foreign fabric. Pakistani fabric is exported and is in demand around the world but here, it is quite evident that mandarins in the PM's Secretariat shun local cloth.
Of course, the staff of the four chief ministers and governors should also be entitled to demand apparel of imported cloth. Viva Globalization!
MIKE BAXTER
Karachi
DHA, Clifton Cantonment Board
What are the functions of the Clifton Cantonment Board (CCB) and is it performing its assigned duties satisfactorily? Is it allowed to carry out its obligations without interference from any quarter? Have its powers been encroached upon or hijacked?
It has been observed that some of the primary functions of the board are now being preformed by the DHA, which is not answerable or accountable to anyone. The DHA administrator acts as president of the board in violation of the rules and laws promulgated by the federal government.
The question, therefore, is whether or not there should be two organizations carrying out the same duties and functions, one of which is an authority. The DHA will not cede its authority to anyone.
The government would, therefore, be well advised to merge the board with the Defence Housing Authority and place its various sections under retired officers who are noted for their efficiency, thereby avoiding the confusion created by the two offices. Retired officers who are more result-oriented will be able to deliver and also make better use of the resources of the richest board.
At present, both the DHA and the board keep on shifting responsibility to each other, which has converted the locality into a 'posh slum'.
BASHIR AHMAD QURESHI
Karachi
Police official on the run
This refers to the news report (June 2) about the escape of a police inspector and his accomplices from the court of an additional sessions judge after receiving a death sentence for killing two prisoners in a fake encounter. How this inspector made the life of a family miserable is an eye-opener for law-abiding and poor Pakistanis.
But much more alarming is the attitude of higher police officers - the DPO and the SSP - who shielded the killers through a fake inquiry report. It has become a practice with the police force that they protect their junior officers vis-a-vis the people. How senior officials of the Multan police are protecting their subordinates in the notorious rape case of female singers should be quite revealing for the government.
The Punjab chief minister is requested to look into the matter and order the arrest of the convicted police inspector. Senior officers who protected their colleagues in uniform should be brought to book and a criminal case registered against them.
MUHAMMAD KHALID CHEEMA
Lahore
Sale of WMDs
Weapons of mass destruction comprise the current obsession of the West. It is not a new theme, of course.
The US routinely passes on military technology to Israel to enable it to dominate the Muslims and the Middle East. Israel in its turn passes it on elsewhere for profit. Britain and the US were involved in supplying weapons of mass destruction to Iraq - a very profitable trade indeed in those days - and also supplied the ingredients of poison gas to their regional ally Saddam for use not only against Iran but also against his own people, witness the Halabja massacres. The holier-than-thou posturing of Blair and Bush deceives no one.
In any war, human booty appears even more valuable than real estate or worldly goods. For instance, apart from the 17,000 stolen patents from Berlin's Patent Office, at the end of the World War II in 1945, which contributed to America's post-war prosperity, the Americans got Werher von Braun without whom they may never have made it to the moon, and the Russians got Willie Messerschmidt without whom they would never have got the MiG.
MOHSIN ALI KHAN
London, UK
Neglect of old pensioners
The finance minister, in his post-budget interview on a private TV channel on June 13, said the exact quantum of the increase in pay and pension (all pensioners) would be determined after the receipt of the recommendations of the Pay and Pension Committee.
It means that the pensioners retiring before 1994 stand a chance for better treatment and understanding. Should not the proposed 'increase' of 16 per cent, therefore, be also treated as dearness allowance, as has been done in the case of the current government servants?
It is a travesty of justice (much talked about but made to sit on the back burner) that the current retiring servants of grades 16 and 17 are considered better than grades 21 and 22 officers of yesteryear. Those assigned to prepare recommendations must realize and appreciate that one day they too would be history and meted out the same treatment.
KHAN A. SHAMSHAD
Karachi
Palestinian state
"Arabs should not use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an excuse to avoid US-sponsored democratic reforms," so said a senior American official (June 8). This appears to be a truth-deficient point of view as it is the US that is not allowing the establishment of a Palestinian state which was democratically sanctioned by the UN through voting in 1947.
Z. A. KAZMI
Karachi
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