| May 16, 2005 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 7, 1426 |
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Clifton Cross
‘Where the tail wags the body’
Kashmiri struggle
USMLE exam
Denationalization of colleges
Barren hills
Allottee’s woes
Inflation
Steel mill at Kalabagh
Disconnection of meter
Development of parks
Bus cleanliness
IN the past one week the Punjab chief minister has announced a number of construction projects involving billions of rupees: A new stadium in Lahore, mainly for the horse and cattle show, to be built over 736 kanals at a cost of Rs1,000 million (Dawn, April 25).
A trade cum-recreational mega complex on Ferozepur Road, to be built on 91 kanals, with three towers and one shopping mall. It will be the tallest building in the country. It will also have a five-star hotel, mini-cinemas, a banquet hall for 5,000 guests and parking facility for 4,000 cars — all at a cost Rs15 billion (Dawn, April 26).
A mausoleum on the grave of Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, a complex close to the mazar and a centre at Lahore. A grant of Rs10 million has already been released. A new building will also be built for the boys degree college established earlier by the government at Wazirabad, as a tribute to the Maulana.
The above projects, it is said, will generate employment and thus livelihood for the people.
The same objective can also perhaps be achieved by laying new roads connecting villages to towns, re- carpeting dilapidated ones in towns, providing clean working toilets by the roadside, and installing functioning streetlights. Much more important is the repair of dilapidated school buildings, reclamation of “ghost” schools, and constructing new ones in areas without them. Sizable employment among the educated will also be generated by recruiting teachers on merit and on livable salaries.
The Punjab chief minister has already taken the praiseworthy step of providing books free of cost to students. It has now to be ensured that there are qualified teachers, and they come to schools regularly and the quality of education imparted is adequate. It is generally seen that students are promoted from class to class as a in routine, and fail only when they go through a board examinations. This, despite the bane of private tuition which has spread like a disease. The directorate of education can be made to check, through frequent and surprise inspections, on the teaching imparted in schools. I understand it is already a part of their duties.
SURAIYA HAFEEZ
Lahore
THIS letter is in response to the appeal made by the Clifton and Defence Traders’ Welfare Association (CDTWA) through an ad in Dawn (May 4). I hope this letter will clarify some of the misconceptions in the appeal.
The first priority design of the FWO and KPT authorities included overpasses. However, that was rejected due to the hue and cry of shopkeepers surrounding the area. It remains unclear why a decision important for the greater good of the city was rejected because of some irate shopkeepers.
The CDTWA’s claim that right turns are made by a nominal number of vehicles is completely misinformed. According to the data provided by the KPT, every 16 hours an average of 10,590 vehicles make a right turn from Boating Basin to Do Talwar, 9,426 vehicles turn from Submarine Chowk to Teen Talwar, 5,419 vehicles turn from Teen Talwar to Boating Basin, while 5,346 vehicles turn from Do Talwar to Submarine Chowk. This means a total of 30,781 vehicles making right turns at the Schon Circle. These figures are by no means “nominal”.
As for the option of making U-turns, it would be naïve to assume that they would facilitate traffic. Making a U-turn means that a car will have to stop, wait for cars from the opposite side to pass before it can turn.
Hence, making U-turns in fact eliminates the whole point of making Schon Circle signal-free to ensure a steady flow of traffic. (The prospect of creating a lane solely for U-turns will also not work in a country like Pakistan, where traffic rules and regulations are blatantly ignored.)
As for the 12-month extension period, if we do believe that the FWO and the KPT are efficient organizations, which they have been so far in the project, we can safely assume that the overpass project will also be completed soon. Also, the purpose of building infrastructure is to make life easier for the public, hence it should be considered an investment, not an “expense”.
The CDTWA’s point about drug addicts collecting at ramps is valid. However, that situation can also potentially occur in the underpass. In fact, since the tunnel is underground, there is more of a chance that such things would happen. Hence, it is for the city government to ensure maintenance.
And, finally, there is no doubt that land value will indeed suffer nominally if overpasses are to be built. But as the nazim points out, our only option is to either watch for land value, or care about citizens’ requirement. Hence, I appeal to the government to let good sense prevail and think about the citizens and not the value of land and property.
AFSHAN KHOJA
Karachi
I WISH you had chosen a different title for my article published in your paper on May12. The title you selected has a strong allusion to what is popularly phrased in the English language as “the tail wagging the dog”. You may have recognized how the request being made to a dog in a cartoon in the Washington Times to “fetch Osama” is being currently interpreted as great insult and injury in Pakistan. It is being taken as an order to a lowly and subordinate, dog-like creature, Pakistan, by its handler the United States. It has raised quite a furore.
Rudyard Kipling in his poem, “The Conundrum of the Workshops”, wrote:
We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg
We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yolk of an addled egg,
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: “It’s clever, but is it Art?”
True, when he wrote this he meant no insult to anyone. He was only pointing at the topsy-turvy state of things in Nature.
The dog is a misunderstood creature in Pakistan. When it wags its tail, it is only saying, “I like you, I love you, you are okay, play with me, pet me.” The tail and the mind of a dog are always well integrated. One cannot act independently of the other.
I am sorry I could not make it quite clear in the last paragraphs of my contribution that it is the establishment which throws up individuals to head the machinery of governing the state. Subsequently, through bad governance, it is responsible for creating conditions in the country which make it necessary for it to declare the individual it had selected as unsuitable to continue. The establishment then unceremoniously sends him home, puts him in prison, and even executes him. It extracts the supreme sacrifice from the individual it once honoured, protected and saluted. Truly such individuals are the “shaheeds” for the establishment. For these reasons, I had chosen the title, “The supreme sacrifice”.
MUBASHIR HASAN
Lahore
MR M. P. Bhandara (May 10), while failing to answer or deal with any of the points I raised in my letter after reading his more or less rosy-eyed account of a visit to Srinagar, goes on to stress the well-known fact that it was Nehru who reneged on Kashmir. He also makes the surprising claim that Mahatma Gandhi would have done otherwise. This is not true.
Doesn’t Mr Bhandara know that Gandhi made a visit to Srinagar on August 1, 1947 to meet Maharaja Hari Singh in order to suggest to him to accede to India and remove his prime minister R.C. Kak, who had advised the ruler to remain independent of both India and Pakistan for a transitional period of at least one year, and only then take a decision in light of developments? The Maharaja not only told Gandhi that he would not accede to Pakistan “on any account” but also accepted his advice to dismiss Kak. Therefore, Mr Bhandara is quite wrong in claiming that “Nehru’s vision was not shared by Gandhi”.
And while I can understand his reasons for extolling Gen Musharraf’s “wise and focused” policy on Kashmir, may I point out that at least three of Dawn’s editorial page columnists, all former Pakistani diplomats of eminence, have correctly concluded on this page that Gen Musharraf has conceded on essentials to India on Kashmir without receiving any reciprocal gesture from the other side?
KHALID HASAN
Washington DC, USA
THE United States Medical Licence Examination (USMLE) is mandatory for every doctor willing to obtain a licence to practice medicine in the US. It is conducted online and candidates have to answer around 350 questions in real time. Those who appeared for the USMLE step-1 exam held at a centre in Clifton, Karachi, on April 27, were in for a great shock and frustration.
After paying around Rs50,000 in fees and having to study a dozen voluminous books day and night for at least seven to eight months in order to prepare for the exam, one expects no faux pas at the examination centre owing to lack of proper facilities and arrangement.
The eight-hour exam in question was supposed to start at 9am but it started an hour late. After two hours of solving questions online there was a power failure and all computers abruptly shut down as there was no power back-up arrangement. When power was restored, one of the computers did not start. And finally when it did, it started giving data error perpetually and all that the candidate using the computer had answered for more than two hours was washed out because of “some technical fault”. And nobody felt responsible.
Considering the gravity of the situation and the high-profile nature of the exam when a doctor has to sit through for eight hours on the computer and a lot of his/her fate depends on the result of this toughest of all steps, what does one do when there is no guarantee that one will complete the exam without any disturbance?
SYED MAJID ALAM RIZVI
Karachi
CONGRATULATIONS to Dr Hamida Khuhro and members of the federal and provincial governments for finally — after more than three decades — undoing a great wrong by handing over Karachi’s St Patrick’s and St Joseph’s colleges back to the Catholic Board of Education (CBE).
I feel that other people who are concerned about education and who value fair play should come forward to support this important public policy move at a time when retrogressive forces like the Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association (SPLA) — a college teachers’ union — and the MMA are opposing it.
This is a fairness issue: how would any of the worthy teachers or the leaders of the Islamic parties like if their prime property is taken-over forcefully by the state without market-based compensation? In this case
the state used their property for more than 30 years and indeed the cost of using it should also have been given to the CBE.
Both these lobbies are propagating the issue as one of depriving the middle and lower classes of “quality education”. In this regard I have sadly experienced the fact that government teaching jobs are often those of last resort in which incumbents are neither recruited on merit nor interested in teaching. Indeed they set very poor examples for students who are forced to remain silent while the great conspiracy goes on.
As a parent I have learned to my great agony the treatment meted out to students who complain against the absence of teachers. Rather than accepting their faults, teachers pick on whistle-blowers to the extent of intimidating them. Even as an elected member of the parent-teachers association I failed to make any improvements. But the change agents at least deserve our support and encouragement.
SYED ABU AHMAD AKIF
Karachi
FINALLY St Patrick’s and St Joseph’s colleges have been denationalized and handed over to their rightful owner. I hope that the school administration with its wealth of experience in imparting quality education will once again make its colleges one of the great colleges of Karachi.
The CBE now has a mammoth task in hand to revamp the ruined structure of the college and remove the disruptive elements of student unions. As a former student of St Patrick’s School I feel it would have been great had it been done in our time. But better late than never.
MASHOOD PERWEZ
Karachi
RECENTLY an old colleague and friend of mine asked me to accompany him for a short vacation to the hills. In anticipation of 10 days of sightseeing in the hills and vales of Murree and Azad Kashmir, I was quick to welcome his kind offer.
En route to Muzaffarabad we drove through the Murree hills. Our initial 10-mile journey was pleasant. However, as we proceeded further we were disappointed to see the vast tracts of slopes stripped of trees. How an onlooker longs to see vegetation and trees on a journey like this.
We saw first-hand on both sides of the Neelam (the Kishanganga) river piles of timber lying in the open. Obviously these trees had been ruthlessly cut down by the timber mafia. Trucks carrying round logs of deodar wood were seen being driven down the road. We asked ourselves as to why the timber mafia was being allowed to operate freely in this beautiful part of our country. Is there no check on such activities?
At best we could see occasional patches of vegetation, tufts of grass and knee-high bushes. The timber mafia has not spared even the valley of Swat and Kohistan district. Endless number of deodar and rosewood (shisham) trees have been cut down just to make money.
Though fruit trees and flower plants in the Swat valley perfume the air, the fact remains that the bulk of the valley has been stripped of its tree cover.
In developed countries 30 per cent of land is required to be under forest area. Here in Pakistan only three per cent of land is under forest, and the forests are fast depleting.
It is time our government woke up to the reality and took steps to control the situation. More than that, local people can also play a part in preserving the environment by organizing groups like “Friends of the Earth”.
AKHTAR KHAN
Lahore
MY wife booked a bungalow in a housing project, located in Karachi’s Scheme-36, which falls in the cantonment area behind Karachi airport. The project was launched more than 10 years ago and payments for booking were received by the builders with the promise to complete the project some time in 1999-2000. Even after receiving full instalments, except the amount of loan (as per agreement) from allottees, the builders failed to complete the project on schedule.
Now they have sent letters to the allottees that shows an increase in the cost of construction and also demand full cash payment of the loan amount in violation of the terms of contract and schedule of payment agreed upon between the allottee and the builders at the time of booking.
I request the relevant government offices to take steps to protect the interest of the applicants.
ZAHEER AHMED KHAN
Dubai
PRICES of items of daily use have gone up. The main cause for the increase is the rise in fuel prices. During the last one year fuel prices have increased by over 40 per cent. I have just returned from Syria and found the price of diesel oil there at seven liras per litre (equivalent to Rs8). Syria is non-oil- producing country and imports its entire needs. Pakistan is lucky enough to be producing about 35 per cent of its oil needs.
If the government decides to bring down the price to a more realistic level, the cost of transportation and energy will decrease and help curtail inflation. The government in order to make up for the loss in revenue can find other areas rather than hurting the common man.
NOORULAIN HUSSAIN ALI
Karachi
IN the mid-1950s, a steel mill, processing locally available ore, was planned at Kalabagh with the technical assistance of Krupp, Germany. Since then nothing has been heard of the project.
Now expansion in Pakistan Steel, Karachi, is being talked about. It is possible that instead of increasing the capacity of the PS, a new steel mill at Kalabagh may be set up for which raw material is locally available in abundance.
I suggest that the government dig out the old paperwork and material about this project and decide accordingly.
MUHAMMAD AKTHAR
Lahore
THE Khangarh (Muzaffargarh) SDO, Wapda, has started disconnecting meters of consumers who are found to be brothers, i.e., those whose father’s name is the same on electricity bills, on the pretext that they are liable to steal electricity. It is cruel of the authorities to deprive people of this basic amenity on mere assumption of guilt. It only exposes a colonial attitude. The hot weather has begun and electricity being a basic human necessity, this action is causing extreme hardship to many. The Wapda chairman is requested to intervene in this matter.
GHAZANFAR ALI
Khangarh
WHILE inaugurating Bagh-i-Hifza in North Nazimabad, Karachi, the city nazim recently said that around 300 parks had been developed in Karachi. We congratulate Mr Naimatullah Khan for making the city green and clean. It is worthwhile to ask whether the city nazim has ever thought of developing parks in Gulistan-i-Jauhar, which has become fully inhabited by now. Not a single park in Block-15 has been developed so far.
Abandoned park sites have become hideouts for undesirable elements. Some of the park sites have already been encroached upon by professional land grabbers.
S.W.A. MAULAI
Karachi
I WANT to draw the attention of authorities, as of the public, to the need for cleanliness in buses. It has been noted that public buses are very dirty and passengers do not observe the ordinary rules of cleanliness. Sometimes they spit on the floor, and if you try to check them, you invite harsh words.
Cleanliness in buses is the duty of every citizen but it is a pity that nobody realizes his duty. Every passenger thinks that he can use a bus as he likes only because he has paid the fare.
I request all bus passengers to stop spoiling the buses. I also request the authorities concerned to take preventive measures to check such practices.
KIRAN ISHAQ
Karachi
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