| 17 January 2005 | Monday | 06 Zilhaj 1425 |
Dilapidated police stations
Between west and east
Tough but rewarding
Lyari and crime mafia
Instead of focusing on developing a much-needed modern, efficient and reliable public transport system for the twin cities, the transport authorities have been busy dealing with the tussle over routes between a franchise bus company based in Rawalpindi and the smaller-sized wagon owners.
Apart from adding to the workload of the already clogged up courts, this controversy has caused considerable inconvenience to commuters in the twin cities, who are left stranded at bus stops every time one or the other group goes on strike to press for their demands.
Public transport in the twin cities is already a problem as it is even without the controversy over routes. Growing urban population plus insufficient investment in infrastructure in this sector has led to a decline in services, both in terms of quality and quantity.
Plagued by corruption, over crowded ness and inefficiency, buses and low capacity minibuses, vans and pick-ups are often sardine-packed with commuters during rush hours.
The severe under-capacity of the public transport system is clearly depicted by the spectacle of passengers, especially schoolchildren, having to indulge in the unsafe practice of sitting on top or hanging on the outside of the vehicle.
An inadequate and unreliable public transport system is a disincentive to education and work because access to schools and offices becomes difficult, thus causing poor attendance and late arrival.
Dissatisfaction with public transport in recent years has made commuters turn increasingly to private cars and motorcycles, as well as taxis and auto-rickshaws. But this greater individual motorized transport has in turn increased road congestion and air and noise pollution as well as aggravated road safety problems in the twin cities.
H sector in Islamabad, where many public and private educational institutions are located and many more are coming up, is poorly served by public transport. The result is troublesome traffic congestion in this area during mornings and afternoons caused by the number of individual vehicles dropping and picking up students.
Less fortunate students without private transport or who cannot afford taxis have to walk long distances from the nearest bus or wagon stop to their institutions in the mornings and vice versa in the afternoons.
Rather than improving the public transport system, the government has actually been boosting the development of the automobile industry by encouraging more private car ownership and use through the facility of bank loans.
But there is a limit to which the twin cities can handle increased volumes of private vehicle use. This is evident by the fact that the widening of roadways, as well as the building of new roads and an underpass in Rawalpindi, have not helped much to ease the traffic congestion, which is getting worse day by day.
An improved public transport system is a necessary part of any solution for the reduction of congestion and chaotic traffic conditions as well as for the improvement in mobility.
And an efficient public transport system is a necessary prerequisite for a strong economy as well. In October 2004, it was reported that the ADB had approved a technical assistance grant to the government to formulate a comprehensive national transport policy.
Attempts have been made in the past to formulate such a transport policy, so much so that even a National Mass Transit Authority was actually established in the first half of the 1990s.
But apart from the introduction of franchise bus companies in the second half of the 1990s, which has only embroiled the government in legal proceedings and left commuters high and dry at bus stands in the twin cities whenever there is a strike, neither has a rapid transit system materialized in any city nor has the road-based public transport system in urban centres been revamped overall to provide an efficient, reliable, safe and adequate transport system that would alleviate the travelling problems of the public.
It must be admitted that revamping the public transport system is not an easy task. For a developing country like Pakistan with less capital but much more labour resources, changing the existing labour-intensive public transport system consisting of thousands of minibuses, vans and pick-ups into a more capital-intensive one with high capacity big buses and rapid transit trains is a politically unpopular exercise.
Besides, the disincentive for big transport companies in such a country like Pakistan is that given the large numbers of poor commuters, they will be forced to keep their fares extremely low, thus considerably restricting the operating revenues and making it difficult for them to afford even routine maintenance and vehicle replacement, let alone system modernization and expansion.
But then it is the job of the government to resolve these problems - by offering financial assistance if necessary - and deliver. India, a country which has similar if not even greater population pressure problems, already has rapid transit systems in four cities, viz., Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi.
The rapid growth of cities like Islamabad and Rawalpindi has generated the enormous need for an efficient public transport service to carry high volumes of passengers. Low capacity minibuses and vans only contribute to deficiency in urban public transport, causing not only congestion but also environmental degradation since more of such vehicles are needed to carry commuters.
If a rapid transit rail system is out of the question for the twin cities for the time being, it being very expensive, an improved bus system then is the only feasible solution.
More than one company running buses on the roads would increase competition and help improve efficiency and reduce costs. But this will have to be accompanied by strict regulation and coordination of the private operators by the government including enforcement of safety and pollution standards.
Unless the government devotes attention and funding into improving and expanding the public transport system, it will remain overcrowded, unsafe and undependable, thus driving ever more people to rely on private cars and motorcycles, leading to even more serious congestion and pollution problems in the twin cities.
Dilapidated police stations
No headway has been made in the construction of dilapidated police stations, which are still working in rented buildings. The police department has been paying rent amounting to lakhs of rupees annually. These police stations are facing numerous problems including shortage of rooms and barracks.
The Building Department has declared dangerous the buildings of police stations of Daska City, Hajipura and Rangpura. The department has asked the higher police authorities to vacate these buildings which were constructed during the British Raj. Funds earmarked for their repair were scarce. Some time ago, a wall of Satrah police station collapsed.
Afterwards, the police station was shifted to another building. The government should allocate sufficient funds for the construction of own buildings of dilapidated police stations.
The Sialkot business community and Sialkot Citizens Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) have jointly started the construction of two police stations, Hajipura and Uggoki, on a self-help basis, at an estimated cost of Rs6 million.
SP (Investigation) Ali Ahmad Sabir Kiyani told newsmen here on Friday that there were only 2,362 policemen for a population of 3.3 million, meaning one policeman for 1,106 people in Sialkot city.
******
Chairman of the Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers Association (PHMA), Sialkot Region, Arshad Javaid Sandal, has demanded that the federal government should establish a textile college in Sialkot for specialization in sports wear and fashion, besides providing funds for the textile laboratory and upgrading the quality and productivity of export-oriented sports wear industry.
Talking to newsmen here the other day, he pointed out that there was huge business of hosiery/knitwear and sports wear in Sialkot, making an enormous contribution to our foreign exchange reserves.
He said that craftsmen and artisans of Sialkot were hard working but in order to utilize their skills and compete in the world market it was vital to set up a textile college which could offer short courses as well as degree programmes on sports wear and fashion.
******
Chairman Citizens Rights Forum Sialkot Dr Muneer Butt told newsmen here that there were more than 210 shops in the vegetable and fruit market. He said that Sialkot Market Committee collected millions in tax every month from these shops but no facility had been provided in this market by the Sialkot TMA and market committee.
Social circles have urged the district government to shift the market out of the city in the larger public interest, besides providing better facilities to the traders and shopkeepers.
Between west and east
A lahore-born Bangladesh academic, Prof Ameena Mohsin, chairperson of the international relations department of Dhaka University, has fond memories of her years in Pakistan, though she had to spend time in camps set up for Bengali officials after the fall of Dhaka.
Prof Mohsin, who was in Karachi recently to participate in a seminar on the role of civil society in South Asia, stresses the need for starting a healing process by acknowledging that excesses were committed in 1971 in the former East Pakistan.
Talking to Dawn, she admitted that all her childhood memories were connected with Pakistan because her father was in the Pakistan Army medical corps. She had her early schooling in Quetta and then went to schools in Sialkot, Rawalpindi and Lahore.
"When 1971 happened, I was in Class VI at the Sialkot Cantonment Public High School. Then we had to go to a camp and we were repatriated in December." The camp was in Kohat and Prof Mohsin's father managed to convince the International Red Cross (ICRC) that his children must have the right to education, even if they were in camps.
"I and my brother were the only two who took admission to the convent in Kohat. We went from camp to school for a few days. But one of the army officers escaped from the camp one day, and the facility was suspended.
From Kohat we were taken to the Mandi Bahauddin camp and there again my father wrote to the ICRC, asking them to give me permission to appear for my SSC examination," said Prof Mohsin.
She had no books but despite moving from camp to camp she had kept in touch with a friend, Aqdas, whose father was also a doctor in the Pakistan Army. Aqdas sent her the books she needed and she got permission through the ICRC to sit for the exam.
She was escorted by army personnel to the examination centre and they remained at the centre. "They used to stand beside me. So it was kind of very traumatizing because everyone used to see what was happening. Still I took the exams largely because of my father.
It was like a crusade for him. And when my results came out, I did very well. It was celebrated by the entire Mandi Bahauddin camp. But I still don't have my SSC certificate. I just have the marks sheet which my friend had sent," recalls Prof Mohsin.
Asked how she looked back to those days, Prof Mohsin said: "To be honest I feel very sad. I just couldn't believe it when we went back and discovered that my entire village had been burnt by the military in Chittagong.
I could not connect this to the people in this wing. That's when I began to think that there was so much of a difference between people and politicians, and I have kept on arguing since then that it is people who can make a difference."
"There was so much that the people could have done. Why was the media silent about it? That is one thing that angers and bothers all of us in Bangladesh today." She believes that lack of information about reality was also responsible for inaction on the part of the people.
And the entire thing was projected as a Hindu conspiracy. In order to remove distortions of history, she stressed the need for changing the curricula here and the need to re-write history.
Prof Mohsin said the events of 1971 could not be erased from the memory of the people who had suffered. But a process of healing and reconciliation should be started. In that context, Asr movement in Lahore was very important for Bangladesh, she said, because women had come forward and apologized to the women of Bangladesh.
"I think at some point the state also has to take responsibility for what it has done. I am not saying that you should officially ask for forgiveness but you should officially acknowledge that excesses had been done."
In this context, she said Gen Pervez Musharraf's statement was taken very positively in Bangladesh, "but he asked us to forget. There is a difference between healing and forgetting".
Regarding the attitude of the people of Bangladesh towards India in terms of 1971, Prof Mohsin said the people in general recognized that India had given refuge to the people.
But at the same time there was one group of scholars which also recognized that Indian interests were involved. "We do recognize both factors. Today I think because of the BJP and the rise of Hindu fundamentalism and the kind of policies India is pursuing, particularly with the water linking project, there is resentment in Bangladesh."
Tough but rewarding
A colleague, who is an early riser in spite of being a journalist, fell into conversation with a newsboy during his morning walk one day. The boy, through with his work, shared with him the tricks of the trade. What the boy said makes an interesting read:
"It's not easy to get up from the bed around 5 am, let alone leave the house on a two-wheeler these days with a chilly wind hitting your face. But that is the plight of the newspaper hawkers.
The job is tough but paying. A delivery man who drops the daily newspaper at your doorstep makes anything between Rs8-10,000 by way of commission, which varies from 25 per cent to 40 per cent.
The more successful the newspaper, the larger the number of copies and less the commission. A paper which offers the hawker two-thirds of the commission of a less successful newspaper but sells ten times more is always dearer to his heart.
"The magazines that he delivers add to his income. The hidden income comes from the leaflets that are given to the hawker by some agents. They are inserted in the Sunday newspapers at the depots from where the hawker picks up his quota of newspapers, which goes up by 20 to 25 per cent on Sundays - an annoyance where newspaper managements and many readers are concerned.
"Unlike the man who runs the newspaper stand and who may be left with some unsold copies (not all newspapers are given by the agents on a sale-or-return basis, at least not the leading newspapers), the newspaper hawker who delivers you your daily paper has no losses to bear, because he picks up exactly the number of copies he needs.
"Sometimes a newspaper vendor "sells" his copies to another hawker. If he has, say, three copies in one locality, he would rather sell it to another hawker, and buy three copies in another area where he has more copies to deliver.
The more affluent newspaper hawkers keep "buying" copies this way. You wouldn't know that you have been "sold". One day your old newspaper man will come to you and say that he is going to his village and henceforth his "brother" would deliver your copy.
The going rate per house is Rs3,000 in Clifton, DHA, KDA Scheme No. 1, etc, and Rs2,000 in Korangi and Landhi. "The chowkidar of a new apartment complex gets his commission when he introduces you to the head of the family which has just moved in.
The watchman gets similar commission from the milkman also, but with packaged milk becoming increasingly popular, the chowkidar's income on this count is dwindling.
"Some of the hawkers have made it so big that they employ other hawkers and pay them salaries. Their job is not merely to deliver the newspapers but also collect the payment. Many of the prosperous hawkers have set up agencies of newspapers.
"Newsboys pick up newspapers from the depots, which are all over the city, unlike in Lahore where there is only one depot the Akhbar Market behind Mayo Hospital. Some students borrow their father's or elder brother's motorbike and make extra money for the family and pay their own college fees," our newsboy says.
CALENDAR MESSAGES
Come New Year, and diaries and calendars start trickling in. In the good old days, these time markers were basically a form of advertisement through which big business firms and companies promoted themselves in the market by showering accolades on themselves.
Now advocacy groups and NGOs working for a cause seem to have discovered the advantage of disseminating their message through calendars and diaries. And which cause would be most popular? The women's cause, of course.
Highlighting the need for gender equality and importance of women's contribution to agriculture, two calendars and one diary landed on our desk recently.
The calendar sent out by PAWLA (Pakistan Women Lawyers' Association) has bold instructions advising women on how to fill out their nikahnama and warning them about the pitfalls of not protecting the bride's rights.
Though not very aesthetically done, the calendar gives sound advice, urging women to pay attention to Clause 17 which provides for "special conditions if any". The calendar suggests that the condition should be added that "the husband will not maltreat his wife or abuse or beat her or inflict mental or physical violence".
PAWLA president Rashida Patel also advises women to pay attention to Clause 18 which says the right of divorce has been delegated by the husband to his wife without any condition. This is generally left blank at the groom family's insistence.
Roots, another Karachi-based NGO, has produced a calendar of six pages showing pictures of women working in the agriculture sector. The pictures and their captions highlight the hardships women suffer given the nature of their chores: picking chiillies leaves their hands and bodies burning, plucking potatoes from the hard soil injures their hands and picking cotton from the pod -- a trade which employs 2.6 million girl children in the country - is a painful task.
The calendar warns of worse things to come if the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are allowed to have their way. These institutions pose a threat to food sovereignty, the calendar notes.
The diary from Uks, an NGO that focuses on women and the media, has a theme every year. This year it is "Healthcare: the silent emergency". It carries articles and journalistic writings which have a message to convey.
The only problem is that all these calendars and diaries are in English. Are women's rights only for the educated, especially those well versed in English? With most of English readers and speakers already supportive of women's rights, this is perhaps the case of preaching to the converted.
EDUCATION OF THE TSUNAMI-STRICKEN
The devastation caused by the tsunami in several countries on the Indian Ocean rim has left the affected nations in a state of shock. Those who escaped the disaster feel sympathy for their neighbours who were not so lucky.
In Karachi practically every street corner on the main roads has tents pitched to collect donations in cash and kind. Banks have put up banners, announcing that they are collecting money for the President's Relief Fund.
A colleague who has acquaintances in Sri Lanka sent off an email to one working in a research organization to inquire about her welfare. She received a reply from them, saying that they were well but needed aid to help the tsunami victims.
Forty-four organizations had joined hands to form the Civil Society Initiative for Relief and Reconstruction, which is a new coalition that has been organized in Sri Lanka to provide humanitarian aid to the victims. Apart from cash, they had appealed for goods such as tents, blankets, dry edible stuff, clothing and can you guess what? Exercise books for children!
One would recall that Sri Lanka has a high literacy rate of 92 per cent and all children are enrolled in schools. One way of helping them get over the trauma of death and destruction caused by the tsunami is to distract their minds from their misery.
The exercise books will come in handy when they restart school, even if it has to be in makeshift classrooms. These children will be better equipped to overcome the shock and their wounds will heal faster.
* * * * *
For over a month now (and till Saturday at least) there has been a gaping manhole almost bang opposite the Chief Minister's House on Dr Ziauddin Ahmed Road. First someone had thrust in a couple of twigs to warn motorists, now someone has planted a flag in it.
The grille in the manhole is fairly widely spaced, and car drivers and motorcyclists try to give it a clear berth for fear of getting stuck, thus creating a traffic bottleneck during rush hours.
There was a pile of gravel next to the manhole on Friday, giving rise to hopes that its fortune may change. For the moment, the pile, streaked with betel juice, is coming in handy as a spittoon.
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com.
Lyari and crime mafia
The recent killing of Anwar Bhaijan, leader of the Baloch Ittehad Tehrik, shocked not only his relatives, community and friends, but also his admirers and well-wishers who believe that his demise has created a vacuum in Lyari, locality where an individual is judged by his services.
Despite his nationalistic political leanings, he never joined a political party and devoted himself to social activity. He always helped people without any discrimination. It was for this reason that he was respected by all segments of society in Lyari, as well as by the Baloch community in Karachi.
He had friendly relations with the activists of various political parties. In fact, in his life, he made only friends, no enemies. He maintained a lifestyle quite different from the people around him.
The most remarkable feature of his nature was that he would never cause annoyance to anybody. Sometimes, his friends disagreed with his approach on a particular issue, but he would pay full attention to their point of view and would give a smile even if he was not convinced by their arguments.
Like any human being, he might have some shortcomings, but he never allowed his emotions to influence his views. Being a social worker, he had also maintained a close liaison with local administration and he used his personal contacts for the welfare of the people.
His demise would no doubt have far-reaching implications on the psyche of the people who had been neglected and betrayed by every political party that ruled the province and the country.
The locality and the people he represented has remained a victim of poverty, social backwardness and illiteracy for decades together. Lyari was once known as Asia's dirtiest place where crime and criminal elements had not only been encouraged by law-enforcement agencies, but also by political parties.
The locality witnessed many political and social upheavals in the struggle against crime and usurpation of legitimate rights. Many activists have lost their lives or rendered handicapped or mentally retarded. There are instances where sincere social workers were forced to give up welfare activities.
The Bhaijan appeared to be the first political victim of the crime mafia in the area. He was made to pay a heavy price for raising his voice against the crime mafia operating in the locality.
The assassination of BIT leader is agitating the minds of Lyari people. They are finding answers to questions like: Why he was killed? Was he a threat to crime mafia or some other such forces? Who would be a beneficiary of his death?
Many of these people wonder why the so-called operation to hunt down criminals in Lyari was abruptly suspended two hours before the murder of Anwar Bhaijan.
An activist expressed the view that answers to these questions would never be known and the mystery of the Bhaijan murder case would remain a dormant case as normally happens in political murders.
Baloch community leaders are of the view that one thing is quite clear; that neither any law, nor order existed in Lyari Town. The only thing that matters is power of gun, they reached the conclusion after discussing the situation in Lyari over the past couple of years.
One must keep a gun and keep himself ready to use it if he wants being heard. Those who would not agree to keep a gun, have no other option but to accept the rule of the brute power.
Criticizing the role of law enforcement agencies, they said the forces were deployed in Lyari here not to contain crime, but their symbolic presence was aimed at just making people feel their presence. "Their deployment and patrolling are not at all for ensuring security of our life, property and honour,'' they lamented.
The community leaders pointed out that the people of this locality had been held hostage by the two gangs of crime mafia for more than a year during which more than 100 people, most of them youths, had been killed. They remarked: "It is now evident that the crime mafia is more powerful than the forces of civil society."