| 12 January 2005 | Wednesday | 01 Zilhaj 1425 |
Car premium issue
Pakistan's natural resources
Educational standard
Power load shedding
CAA's porter service charge
Wrong decisions & correct decisions
What's in a name?
Road blockade in DHA
Passport issue
Investment by expats
National cricket team
US think tank's new strategy
Traffic rules
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It was after the World War I that a need for an international army was felt. American president Woodrow Wilson was one of the few world leaders who proposed the setting up of an international organization.
The main aim of the organization was to promote world peace, and solve territorial disputes among member-nations. But the League of Nations was not given its own permanent army and, instead, had to rely on members to supply it with troops. Soon in 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, and showed the world that the League of Nations was non-functional without an army.
In 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia, and once again proved that the League of Nations could not force its decision on member-nations without an army. If the League of Nations had an army, the Italian invasion of Abyssinia could have been prevented.
In 1945, at the Yalta conference the three allied powers, the USA, the USSR and Britain, agreed to set up another organization to maintain world peace, to replace the League of Nations.
Even at Yalta the allies disagreed on giving this new organization it own permanent army, and what we have here today is an organization known as the United Nations, which is supposed to maintain world peace without an army.
Instead, it has begged the major powers to support military expeditions. As a result, the United Nations has become a tool for the powers to use against weaker nations.
Bertrand Russell, in his book Political Ideals (1917), has suggested that world peace can be maintained by an international organization, and this organization should have its own permanent army, so that military action can be taken against an aggressor state if it refuses to accept a UN demand.
Russell also said that nations (citizens) should not think in terms of nationalism, rather they should be thinking internationally. This means that citizens should not think what they can gain, but should think what the world can gain.
It seems that we have not learnt much from the two great wars of the 20th century; the western powers specially keep on repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
CH. BILAL MAZHAR
Karachi
Car premium issue
This has reference to Mr Kashif Farooq's letter "Car premium issue (Jan 5). I agree that notice to car manufacturers by the ministry of industries and production for resolving the 'premium' issue in two months will not solve the problem. I disagree that there is a small group of middlemen.
It is fact that all investors have entered this new field, including businessmen, bureaucrats and even some legislators. I will give here an example of profit-making.
If a person books a car for Rs850,000, he gets delivery of the car in six months; he sells the same vehicle at a premium of Rs150,000, again books a car and gets delivery in six months and then again gets a premium of Rs 150,000. In one year he gets a profit of Rs300,000 on an investment of just Rs850,000, i.e., more than 33 per cent.
On the other hand, 90 per cent of cars are purchased through leasing. If a person gets a loan from a bank and opts for normal booking, he will get car delivery after six months but he has to pay monthly instalments from the very next month.
Therefore, he prefers to get instant delivery by paying the premium because this amount is also paid by the bank and is recovered in instalments, but the burden has to be borne by the individual concerned. In this way the middle class - the genuine buyers - suffers.
There is no solution to the above problem except through a law that prohibits sale of any new vehicle above the retail price fixed by the manufacturing company.
Only a maximum of Rs10,000 may be allowed as service charges. Any person or car dealer breaking the law may be punished with imprisonment, forfeiture of vehicle and a heavy fine.
CAPT (retd) GHULAM SHABIR
Karachi
(II)
The federal government had constituted a task force in 2003 to examine the cost of motorcars and the profits of the car assemblers. Since then, the ministers in charge of industries and production responsible for overseeing the automobile industry in Pakistan have issued statements from time to time about the high prices, the menace of premium and the unusual delay in the delivery of motor vehicles.
The ministry of industries and production spent more than one year in giving the impression to the genuine car buyers that the government was serious about the whole issue and was determined to resolve it.
Nothing has changed at all. Rather, the opposite has happened. The car assemblers have escalated their prices over the past one year, the dealers have boosted the premium rate and deliveries remain abnormally late. Will someone in the ministry concerned come up with an explanation?
MUMTAZ A. PIRACHA
Karachi
Pakistan's natural resources
Pakistan is for the most part an arid and semi-arid country and is seriously threatened with desertification and degradation of land and acute water shortage because of increasing population and its resultant pressure on natural resources.
An institutional framework for environmental protection has been functioning in Pakistan since 1997, when the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act was promulgated.
This is coordinated by the Pakistan Environmental Agency, generally called the federal EPA. The Pakistan Environmental Protection Council, headed by the chief executive, approved the National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) for improving environment.
Later we came to know that a five-year NEAP support programme was developed through UNDP assistance at a cost of $42.7 million. Since then, $70.573 million has been allocated for the improvement of the environment, e.g., protected area management, wetland projects, implementation of the National Environmental Action Plan, as well as Rs1,238 billion for forestry, wildlife and wetlands and Rs29. 04 billion for local government and rural development.
All these representative projects are being funded by UNDP, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the government of Japan. May I ask, being a stakeholder, about the status of the above-mentioned projects? I suggest publicizing success stories/progress (if any) related to the environment on the electronic media, as well on the national hook-up, on a daily basis.
RASHID ASHRAF
Karachi
Educational standard
This is to endorse the Sindh Public Service Commission report (Dawn, Oct 27, 2004). The standard of education in Sindh, particularly in the interior, is deteriorating because of our rulers' deliberate ignorance of the education sector in the province. The chief minister appears to have no time for the education sector.
The federal education minister too has little time to worry about the standard of education in Sindh where teachers are mostly untrained and appointed on political grounds.
They are least interested in their profession, and mostly do private jobs, relegating teaching to second place. They usually encourage the use of unfair means and have produced a "copy culture" among students to hide their weakness. If such is the situation, how can we expect students to perform well at competitive examinations?
Primary education in Sindh is the worst-affected. Teachers posted at small village schools remain absent. The education officers do not care. The high-ups in the education department, who are usually civil bureaucrats, have no professional skills to deal with educational standard.
Universities and colleges are hostage to professional student leaders; vice-chancellors have no choice except to surrender before them. To overcome the situation, a reasonable salary package should be offered to teachers.
Teachers should be made selected through SPSC, without accepting any political or other pressure. A professional person ought to be made education secretary who should be accountable to the provincial assembly.
Political parties should be banned from college and university campuses. The federal government should provide ample financial resources for education in the province. A two per cent of GDP in the national budget for the whole of Pakistan is insufficient.
FAIZAN SIAL
Islamabad
Power load shedding
I have not come across a more ignorant statement than that attributed to Mr Liaquat Ali Jatoi and published on the front page of Dawn (Dec 29), pertaining to shortage of power generation in the country and consequent load shedding warranted from Jan 1.
These misleading political statements to cover up ill-conceived planning about technical matters cannot befool even a man on the street today. Hydel power is always to be supplemented by thermal power plants.
In the first place, we should be able to make these plants, involving a boiler and turbine technology, ourselves, based on furnace oil, and even if we cannot do it, we should ask the private sector to buy these and even if that is not possible, we should buy and get these installed rather than buy F-16 warplanes.
It's a pity how engineers in institutions like Wapda and PAEC utilize their time. They have yet to show any significant achievement except making tender documents. It is unfortunate we have to suffer for faulty planning and mismanagement by the technical and non-technical staff of government departments having little or no knowledge.
ARIF QAMAR KHAN
Islamabad
CAA's porter service charge
I am a frequent traveller between Peshawar and Riyadh, and have observed that the Civil Aviation Authority is arbitrarily charging Pakistanis (mostly working class travelling to the Gulf states) Rs100 in the name of 'porter service'. Most of these Pakistanis do not even know the meaning of "porter service token" given to them by CAA personnel.
On Dec 25, most of the passengers travelling with me from Peshawar were asked by CAA porters to accompany them (they never told them that Rs100 is the service charge they have to pay).
On reaching the PIA counter, they were surprised to know that they have to pay the service charge to the CAA, though many of them had just one bag in their hand which they could have easily carried themselves.
A PIA officer on duty, who was witness to the incident, did question the CAA facilitation staff on what service they had rendered to these passengers for which they were charged.
Even some passengers who themselves brought their luggage were still asked by the facilitation staff to pay the amount. After 30 minutes of hot debate over the issue, a bearded porter alleged that they were under CAA pressure to accompany as many passengers as possible to achieve its monthly target of Rs470,000, otherwise they would be paid less.
The CAA has deliberately placed the counter at the end of the departure lounge and no signboard has been placed there over in Urdu or English, and the passengers have no other option but to pay. I would request the authorities concerned to look into the matter and do the needful.
IRFAN ULLAH MARWAT
Saudi Arabia
Wrong decisions & correct decisions
A short but compact news item from Paris declares: "French woman quits Muslim council" (Dawn, Jan 6). Dounia Bouzar, one of the two women members of the French Council for the Muslim Religion, formed just two years ago, has resigned in protest that its members 'did not seize the extraordinary opportunity it had two years ago when all the conditions were right for creating a new sense of Muslim religious consciousness adapted to French secularism'.
The bottom line of what Ms Bouzar tells us is that Muslims in all of 57 Islamic countries have to understand secularism. It is the system which reveals the true meaning of freedom, democracy and knowledge.
We do not understand secularism probably because we are uneducated and are ruled by despots, kings and dictators or perhaps we are firmly caught by the neck by the mullahs.
S.M. KAZIM NAQVI
Karachi
What's in a name?
The controversy surrounding the adoption of alien names for teams of our domestic cricket league is unlikely to die down. I agree with the comments made by some readers that the names should have some link to the places they are representing.
In this regard, it seems that Dr Mervyn Hosein (Dawn, Dec 10) has missed the mark when he questions why so much fuss is being made on the issue of naming a cricket team.
Naming a cricket team is as important as the composition of the team. The fans need to relate to this. Equally important is the concept of involving the public in the whole process. The PCB seems to have ignored the public in the exercise when ironically the idea is to create more interest amongst the people for domestic cricket.
In fact, as things stand, one can also ask why a foreign commercial bank has been involved in this exercise when a number of local sponsors would have been happy to individually sponsor their local teams.
I know for a fact that if given the chance, my company would have volunteered to sponsor a Faisalabad team but only if they changed their name from the rather uninspiring title of "Faisalabad Wolves."
While I hold the PCB chairman in high esteem and laud his efforts at trying to better the game at the grassroots' level, one has to say that the idea of naming local teams without taking cricket lovers into confidence is quite a let-down.
SHAHID UR REHMAN
Faisalabad
Road blockade in DHA
Near the intersection of Khayban-i-Shaheen and Khayban-i- Muhafiz in Karachi's DHA is the private residence of a middle- level police official who has had a tent along with guards placed outside his house. This tent blocks half of one lane of Khayban-i-Shaheen and is cause for accidents, especially during rush hours.
More recently, I was asked by the policeman stationed outside the house to cross the road when passing by the house due to "security reasons." Most pedestrians are given the same instruction despite the fact that the police official does not hold a sensitive post.
Complaints to the DHA have yielded nothing. I have also written to the DIG Operations to get rid of this obstruction but nothing has come of this. Who next do I have to write to so that this nuisance is stopped?
AHMAD HAKIM
Karachi
Passport issue
This refers to the federal cabinet's decision to form a committee on the passport issue. The common people never expected that deletion of the religion column, which in any case was superfluous information, will be turned into a national crisis.
It must be emphasized for the benefit of our misguided religious zealots that the purpose of a passport is to establish the holder's nationality - not his religion. What good will it do if the religion column is re-introduced?
REHANA NAQVI
Karachi
Investment by expats
Pakistanis living abroad have not been able to apply for the purchase of shares of the recently made public offerings of PPL and other stocks since banks have showed their inability to process their applications.
May I request the prime minister to issue necessary instructions to our banks abroad to facilitate Pakistani expatriates when public offerings are next made to boost foreign exchange reserves?
Application forms should be made available with the banks well in time. A certain number of shares may be reserved for our expatriates paying only in foreign exchange.
SYED SAEED JASAN
Karachi
National cricket team
After Imran Khan's departure from the national side, our cricket has been marked by betting scandals, spineless performances and controversial decisions at the level of the cricket board. All indicates that the patron-in-chief needs to find a solution.
Mere changing of personalities will not do. This in no way means that the present lot should continue to hold sway, but a thorough analysis has to be undertaken and, if need be, grassroots changes made in the structure of our domestic cricket.
There seems to be no dearth of talent; tapping this vast pool has to be looked into. Besides skills, cricket is all about character and courage. Sadly it is these two very attributes that are completely missing from our cricketing scene.
Playing favourites who lack temperament, discipline and physical fitness does no credit to our cricket. If the PCB coffers are flush with money, they should donate generously to the recent victims of the tsunami disaster rather than heaping it on individuals who hide behind sham injuries and inflated egos.
JAVED KHAN
Haripur, NWFP
US think tank's new strategy
Dawn of Dec 28 carried a report about a new study by a US think tank called Rand Corporation which has recommended that the Sunni-Shia and Arab-non-Arab divides should be exploited to promote US policy objectives in the Muslim world. One shivers to think of the consequences.
Are high-profile persons in the US administration still not satiated with the results that have so far been obtained by their ventures in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the world where Muslims live?
President Abraham Lincoln had pronounced in his historical message of the Union speech the words "with enmity towards none". The Rand Corporation should go deep into the words of their late president and think what that great soul meant by with enmity towards none before putting their devastating anti-Muslim thoughts into practice.
GHEEWALA A.G.M.
Karachi
Traffic rules
On my way from work one day, I saw a man on a bicycle being hit by a car at a traffic signal. The fault was entirely of the man on the bicycle who was passing through the intersection without observing the traffic lights.
Since then I have observed that most non-mechanized vehicles do not follow traffic regulations like stopping at red lights. They seem to think they are exempt from this.
These include bicycles, thelas, donkey carts and such vehicles. As a result, they cause traffic jams and get into accidents. Will the traffic police take notice?
ADNAN SALEEM
Karachi
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