| 23 August 2004 | Monday | 06 Rajab 1425 |
The reality of the earlier flowers
Robbed - at last
Tribute paid to labour leader
It has been nearly two months now since dead fish were found sprawled on the shores of Rawal Lake, but the exact cause of the marine death in the capital's scenically attractive lake still remains unclear, despite the plethora of laboratory tests conducted by numerous concerned agencies.
The latest report on the lake's water by the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council revealed traces of pesticides. Earlier, tests on water samples from the lake and the dead fish conducted by the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency were said to have detected bacterial (E coli) contamination.
Yet other tests conducted by the National Institute of Health had apparently found no bacterial contamination. Tests done by the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) had apparently also found no contamination by arsenic, mercury, lead or nitrate components.
Regardless of the exact cause, the dead fish episode is a stark reminder of the extent of pollution in Rawal Lake, which is the sole drinking water reservoir for the city of Rawalpindi.
Concern about pollution in Rawal Lake had been noted over the years by various local and international agencies. As early as 1990, an international Ramsar mission had studied the Rawal Lake site and recommended that the lake should be protected through conservation education and that it should not be neglected by the concerned authorities. (In 1976, Pakistan was the 12th country in the world and the second in Asia to join the Ramsar Convention, aimed at conserving important wetlands in the world.)
In 1997, Rawal Lake was selected for special attention at the 5th session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development in New York. The Pakistan government submitted that projects concerning improvement of the lake's catchment areas and watershed management had been recommended, and that to control pollution in the lake specifically, a committee under the chairmanship of the Islamabad Chief Commissioner was constituted. It was also submitted that the Punjab government had been asked to provide Rs57.75 million for the projects recommended for the lake.
But pollution in the lake worsened subsequently. In 2001, a foreign-based NGO conducted a water quality sampling at the lake in conjunction with a local NGO affiliated to the environment ministry, and it observed that untreated urban waste water effluents, runoff from poultry farms, and pollutants released during the recreational use of motorboats in the lake were among the sources suspected of contaminating the lake.
Then in 2002, the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pepa) warned that the water quality of the lake was deteriorating with increasing contents of human and poultry refuse.
Pepa reported that its samples had showed that the water contained high concentrations of phosphates and sulphates, which were indications of human refuse and poultry farm pollutants.
In 2003, a study by Asian Development Bank consultants identified significant sources of pollution within the lake catchment area and recommended appropriate action to control pollution from municipal, industrial, agricultural and other developments within the catchment area.
Finally, early this year, a top official from the ADB blamed lack of management as the major reason for the failure to control contamination of water in the catchment areas.
The Rawal Lake Catchment Management Committee which was established to control pollution in the lake had failed to deliver, apparently due to lack of coordination among the various government departments that are represented in it.
Although Rawal Lake is a reservoir which serves the drinking needs of the people of Rawalpindi city, the lake is located within the Islamabad capital territory. Much of its catchment areas fall not only within the jurisdiction of the Capital Development Authority, but within the Murree-Kahuta Development Authority's jurisdiction as well.
(In the latter area, the sewerage and drainage system is poorly developed, thus enabling waste water to join the lake's sources. Even within the federal capital, the water supply system is known to be defective, with sewerage and water pipelines running side by side.)
The municipal departments concerned with controlling pollution in the lake, include, therefore the Capital Development Authority, Murree-Kahuta Development Authority, Rawalpindi Development Authority, and Rawalpindi Cantonment Board. Also concerned with pollution in the lake are a host of other federal and provincial departments.
On August 7, the Islamabad chief commissioner had convened a meeting of all departments possibly concerned with controlling pollution in the lake. Strategies were discussed and several decisions were made. Pepa was directed to regularly monitor the catchment areas.
But, whether the meeting will prove to be the turning point for pollution control in the lake depends on two factors. First, the ability of government agencies to cut through the red-tape, buck up on approving projects for pollution control, and efficiently implementing the latter.
Monitoring the lake and its catchment areas alone will not do. The relevant agencies need to be armed with the authority to take action against any individual, farm, factory, municipal agency, etc., found wanting in pollution control measures.
Secondly, pollution control also depends on the willingness of the Punjab government and its relevant departments to help invest in pollution control projects in the catchment area. After all, we should not only depend on foreign donors for environmental improvement. We need to invest from our own resources as well.
The next time round, there may not be dead fish only, but dead men, women and children as well. Let not the Manchhar Lake contamination tragedy in Sindh be repeated here.
The reality of the earlier flowers
Let me conclude today Maulvi Muhammad Saeed's account of his early days as a journalist and his friends and associates from his book, Lahore: A Memoir.
Maulvi Saeed begins:
Faiz left the country, for many to surmise whether it was a pleasure trip, banishment or self-inflicted exile. Statements of conflicting complexions found their way into newspaper columns for no denial or confirmation came from the other side. He returned once or twice and on one occasion was entertained to a luncheon. I felt honoured to welcome him home on behalf of the journalistic fraternity.
Faiz went to distant lands. He was moving among the world's elite and in circles far beyond my interests or imagination, till we met in Islamabad in the Daira function. In between, my association with The Pakistan Times - re-established for a short period after retirement - had reached its fruition and I found myself occupying the same chair that once Faiz occupied, albeit reduced much in authority and charm. In fact, it was a glamourless office now.
Yet, even though it was much shorn of its plumage, I always carried an Arabic proverb in my mind. Faiz was fond of Arabic and now when he is gone I repeat it to his soul: 'The death of the big has made us big.' I felt it then in journalism. Many may now feel it so in many other fields.
Zuhair was younger to us, yet first to go. His death had made me profoundly sorrowful. When I heard of the motor crash in which he perished, I was over whelmed by the memories of that bygone age.
Some time in the middle of 1946, a tall, handsome young man walked into Dawn's news room in Delhi and introduced himself as Zuhair Siddiqui, a new entrant to the small but growing fraternity of journalists which was gradually replacing the Christian and Hindu staff.
Mr. Altaf Husain had already replaced Pothan Joseph as Editor and Mr. Mahmud Husain, Mr. Punan as assistant editor. Both belonged to East Pakistan: Altaf Husain to Sylhet and Mahmud Husain to Rangpur.
The young man, extraordinarily lively, soon captured the attention of his colleagues. Fresh from the university - where he had an enviable academic record - he exhibited a taste for good conversation. Whenever a topic lent itself to polemics, he plunged into it with the zest of a debater.
Most of us were new to the trade. Yet finding a fresh avenue opening before us we relished our jobs and the newsroom despite its proverbial boredom was, for us, a place both of work and recreation.
Zuhair initially joined our shift and then went over to the 'rival' shift. None the less we never lost contact with him. He lived with Maulvi Abdul Haq at the office of Anjuman-i-Taraqqi-i-Urdu across the road in the heart of a newly-built Hindu colony which stretched right up to the Jamuna's water-edge.
The communal riots were assuming the ferocity and dimension of civil strife, yet Maulvi Abdul Haq along with his "young birds" did not lose sleep over it all. Zuhair's comings and goings to office were not disturbed.
The respect and zeal with which Zuhair often talked of the Maulvi Sahib showed that he had inherited two things from his distinguished father, Dr. Abdus Sattar: the love of Maulvi Sahib and a heart that cherished the noble values of life. What he seemed to have himself acquired at the university was, of course a leaning towards the Left.
I remember Zuhair telling us one day that when the British Chief Commissioner of Delhi, Sir Evan Jenkins (who later became Punjab's governor and Khizr Hayat's mentor), announced that he would hold a Durbar in Red Fort's Diwan-i-Aam, the Maulvi Sahib decried the idea with a contemptuous 'phoo' and said: "What an abominable creature!"
Towards the close of the year we shifted to a large, dingy building in Taraha Bairam Khan, the topmost storey of which was an ideal place to relax after the day's work. We often sat there during the respite that is normally available when the shifts change.
Husain Sahib, Ahmad Ali Khan (Editor Dawn), Zuhair and the late-goers of the afternoon shift composed the gathering. The talk rambled along all manner of topics from open politics to secret scandals.
Zuhair's impeccable Urdu interspersed with Husain Sahib's 'Banglaised' Urdu made a delicious admixture. We sat and conversed till the Irwin Hospital complex beyond the crumbling rampart faded into the evening dusk. This memorable house was, later, sacked by the Jan Sangh.
Independence came and with it this small fraternity was scattered. I came to Lahore to join The Pakistan Times. Zuhair and Husain Sahib came later and the Delhi trio was re-united.
When things began to settle down, union activities were bound to emerge. The Pakistan Times could not but be the centre of these activities. It was equally natural for Zuhair to participate in them.
Once, in an electoral bout, he found himself pitted against 'Meem Sheen'. Both sides had fielded equally good panels, and everybody thought that it was going to be an extremely sharp fight.
Chiragh Hasan Hasrat who was backing Zuhair rang me up to cash my vote for his candidate. But I had already promised my vote to Meem Sheen. I explained my difficulty to Zuhair in the midst of voting. He took it magnanimously.
This refined temperament, as I was told later (when I had once again shifted to Dawn), made Zuhair differ vigorously even with Mian Iftikharuddin over the legitimacy of the Russian intervention in Hungary.
In November 1959 both of us were travelling in the same plane to Teheran to cover President Ayub's visit to Iran and Turkey. Zuhair represented The Pakistan Times and I The Civil and Military Gazette.
The journey took us to many Middle Eastern cities - other than the scheduled ones. Though exacting, the tour was a delightful experience, owing mostly to Zuhair's brilliant company. Many times we had to pool our little Arabic and Persian to pull ourselves out of a predicament.
Circumstances made us colleagues again. I, too, joined The Pakistan Times after painful spell of unemployment and litigation during which Zuhair did not only give me moral support but painstakingly prepared the brief for me, for he had himself gone through a similar traumatic exercise.
As a thorough-going man he had, in order to diminish his dependence upon lawyers, studied all the relevant laws for his own case. Seeing the agony writ large on my face, he remarked one day: "Dear sir, had you been young, you would have turned Communist".
After some time he left The Pakistan Times to edit The Civil & Military Gazette. His powerful pen infused a new life into the journal, but the times had changed and the aged newspaper could not be kept afloat.
With this Zuhair's desk assignments came to an end. Now he was a free-lance. Making a living with the pen has never been hazard-free adventure. But Zuhair carved out a place for himself through hard and patient work. The last piece from his pen which I had the pleasure of reading was a letter of goodwill to me upon my rejoining The Pakistan Times which once we both served jointly with devotion and pride.
Our association in work had long ceased. Yet in Santayana's words "if later and in other circumstances the soil that was fertile became sterile, if the stream that watered it has ceased to flow, that does not cancel the reality of the earlier flowers".
(Concluded)
Robbed - at last
A colleague says he can now lay claim to the status of a 'true' Karachian. He is a born Karachian, a fact known to all and sundry, and people wonder what is it that has suddenly made him feel, in his words, 'a true Karachian'.
It transpires that he has finally gone through a mugging. He had his wallet snatched at gunpoint the other day. Feeling the terribly cold metal of a TT pistol on one's temple, he believes, is the reason for his claim to an elevated status now.
Coming from the Sakhi Hasan roundabout towards Haidery in North Nazimabad, he had to take a U-turn for his house. As he stopped behind another car, waiting for it to move ahead, two chaps came out of the car and demanded everything to be handed over to them, shoving their TTs on two somewhat confused heads, those of the colleague and his wife.
While the wallet was handed over immediately, it took a while for them to convince the robbers that they did not have any mobile phones. The colleague in question finds even the land line one too many for his peace of mind, and stays clear of mobile phones, but that certainly did not impress his tormentors that day, and they left thoroughly disappointed for which the colleague offers his apologies. The whole episode, lasting less than a minute, took place in full public view at about eight in the evening.
On hearing the story, the first question most people asked was how much money the wallet had. This only added to the agony of the colleague because, in his words again, it is not as much about money as it is about the trauma of the whole experience.
While he kept arguing about the shock factor for long, he did confide in a friend who later conceded that the amount in the wallet was embarrassingly low and not worth making public.
Low-income schools
In a country where the standard of education in government schools leaves a lot to be desired, and the disparity between the syllabi and methodologies of teaching in private schools and state-run schools is widening, The Citizens' Foundation (or TCF as it is generally known) has been providing quality education to children living in low-income areas.
Initiated in 1995 by like-minded Karachians who wanted to do something for their country rather than bicker about it, TCF is currently running 180 primary and secondary schools in kutchi abadis all over Pakistan, with over 90 schools in Karachi.
One of the aspects of these institutions is the fact that they are identical in their physical structure as well as in their policies and curriculum. Each school is constructed on a minimum of 1,000 square yards in a slum area and has classes from KG to class five (in the primary schools) and from six to matric (in the secondary schools).
Other than the spacious classrooms in each of these double-storey buildings, one can find a library, staff-room, art room and office. In addition, the secondary schools have computer labs and science labs.
In order to maintain a high teaching standard, TCF has an in-house training programme for teachers. TCF also arranges a refresher training programme for its in-service academic staff, every year. New workshops are added annually to introduce new techniques and information as well as to identify and rectify weaknesses.
Another feature of these schools is that they have an all-woman faculty as they realized soon after their inception that parents were reluctant to send their girls to school because of reservations about male staff members. Now, 50 per cent of TCF students are girls.
The policy of the organization is to charge all its students, even if it is a nominal sum of Rs100 or Rs150 for primary school children and Rs175 for secondary students, so that the parents value their children's education.
Living on a prayer
A beggar was spotted the other day near a traffic signal in Liaquatabad who was unlike any other. With a bandaged foot and some rocks in his hands, the man struck a menacing pose when a motorist declined to give him alms even after repeated requests.
It seemed as if the middle-aged and grey-haired man would smash the windscreen of the car driven by the 'inconsiderate' person who had refused to give him money. But, fortunately nothing of the sort happened. However, the beggar kept the vehicle in his sights for a considerable time, as he muttered something to himself.
In contrast, let us look at Faisal. He is married and has three sons. They live in a rented two-room house in Korangi. To make ends meet, he works at least 16 hours a day. He is so busy that he visits his home every other day.
And Faisal gets no off days. From 9am to 5pm each day he works as a driver for one of the managers of a private company. From 7pm to 3am he drives a coach which drops home the company's night-shift workers.
Faisal says he earns only Rs8,000 per month from his two jobs. "The rent of my house is Rs2,500 and Rs500 is spent on the schooling of my sons. And because I have to eat out all the time, I need at least Rs1,500 for myself."
This leaves only Rs3,500 for the rest of the family. Obviously, they find life difficult. Between the two jobs, there isn't enough time for Faisal to go home. "And after both the jobs are over, I am usually so tired that I 'bed down' in my coaster."
He goes home every alternate day, either to get a good sleep or for a change of clothes. Faisal says he has been working for 16 hours every day for the last two-and-a-half years.
Names, old and new
If you drive on University Road, soon after crossing the second gate of the campus, you will find a school on your left with a large board carrying the unusual name: "In the Shadow of University School". Painted in smaller lettering is "For Matric, O and A-Levels".
This is a stranger name than that of a school that used to run in one of the old buildings situated in a lane off Burnes Road - it was called "All Saints School". It was owned by a Muslim in the 1950s when the first choice of a middle class parent was a missionary school.
St Patrick's, St Joseph's, St Paul's and St Lawrence's had a waiting list that ran into several pages. "All Saints School" closed down before the end of the decade.
Then there was "All Ki Rehmat Ka Mohammadi Hotel". It was a restaurant which served good food but not so good tea. For tea one had to go to "Chamcha Hotel", another odd name.
But these days the place for tea is "Pyala Hotel" in Gulberg. The clientele is very large, particularly on Saturdays and Sundays, when a mini traffic jam occurs outside the restaurant.
Tea buffs come in buses and in private transport - two wheelers and four wheelers alike. Food is not their speciality but some people like to wash down their parathas with cups of tea. The customers wait for occupying space on the charpoys spread out on the premises. The tea is served in "pyalas" (small bowls), hence the restaurant's name.
Usually restaurateurs, shopkeepers and small businessmen name their establishments after their children or after their own selves. But a provision shop in Golimar was named by the owner after his mother-in-law. When someone asked him whether this was out of affection, pat came the reply: "I couldn't think of any other way of making my wife happier."
In Kharadar, there are three small eateries that are referred to as "Bakra Hotel". It is their generic name. "Bakra" in the local dialect means a bench. All these eateries used to place benches on the pavements and serve food and tea.
Thanks to their tasty food and syrupy tea, they earned enough money to rent proper premises. Tables and chairs have replaced the benches but the generic name hasn't changed. The clients prefer it this way.
Visitor goes back
The writer Qurutulain Hyder, who lives in New Delhi, was in Karachi on a short visit last week. She had planned to stay for nearly a month, but had to go back early.
The visit was strictly private, and she spent her time with her family. She did not undertake any public engagement, and had warned her family, which includes several journalists, against any interviews. The loss was Karachi's.
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com.
Tribute paid to labour leader
KARACHI: A condolence meeting in memory of noted trade union activist Shaikh Qalander was held at the PMA House on Saturday. The Shaikh, a former president of the Mazdoor Anjuman, Sindh, expired on July 12.
The meeting to recall his services to the cause of labour unity and a valiant struggle for their rights was held at the Faiz Ahmed Faiz public library, Liaquatabad, and attended by his colleagues, friends and admirers.
They included Prof Anis Zaidi, editor of Irteqa, Rahat Saeed, Anwer Ahsan Siddiqui, Wahid Basheer, Nabi Dad Khan and Ghayasuddin.President of the Mazdoor Anjuman Latif Baba presided over the meeting.
The speakers quoting instances from the eventful life of the Shaikh Qalander and paid glowing tributes to his services. They eulogised the late labour leader's commitment with common people of the country and their democratic rights as unflinching.
Shaikh Qalander, for several years, worked for the textile mills at SITE area and was rendered jobless after leading a strike by workers. It may also be remembered that during the struggle launched by media men against Gen Zia's Martial Law in 1978, Shaikh Qalander was one of those who had courted arrest. He was jailed for some time. "He was a fighter, but when his last moments came, he remained at peace and quietly left," Latif Baba said.