| June 30, 2005 | Thursday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 22, 1426 |
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Consumer courts for Punjab
Protecting marine turtles
WHO is talking on whose behalf may be controversial, but the contradictory statements emanating from Washington and Baghdad confirm that the Iraqi resistance is being engaged in talks. On Tuesday, President Jalal Talabani insisted that negotiations with the insurgents were a US affair. This ran counter to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s assertion that his government’s role in the talks was that of a broker for the Iraqi government. All that the US was doing, he said, was to “facilitate” the holding of those parleys. Why the two sides should shy away from owning the talks is not difficult to understand. Having vilified the insurgents in the foulest of language — terrorists being a mild one — both Baghdad and Washington now find it embarrassing to have a dialogue with the insurgents. But they have no alternative, because the resistance represents a force that cannot be wished away.
When Baghdad fell, the US-led allies had made the world believe that Iraq had been “secured” and that the end of the Saddam regime meant the beginning of a new era of peace and democracy. There were grounds for believing so, because the resistance took some time to organize and make its presence felt. However, once it began, the world was surprised by the resistance’s strength. The failure to crush the resistance was then attributed to the fact that Iraq was ruled by a US-nominated government. However, the induction of an elected government did not seem to have made much difference. The talks now admitted to have been going on speak of a realization in Washington that the resistance cannot be taken lightly for it does represent a sizable section of the Iraqi people and must be associated with any scheme designed to bring peace and stability to Iraq. However, this is not an easy task.
It is true that many strains have got mixed up in Iraq’s present troubles. One element of the resistance is led by Mosab al-Zarqawi, who is head of Al Qaeda’s Iraq chapter. At the same time, there are nationalist groups opposed to the US occupation. Iraq was never a fundamentalist society, and President Saddam Hussein had never warmed up to Osama bin Laden. If the resistance is today led by a fundamentalist, America has to blame itself for it. Force to crush the Zarqawi group cannot succeed any more than it has succeeded in crushing the Taliban in Afghanistan. Ultimately, there will have to be a negotiated settlement. But America’s refusal to give a date for the withdrawal of occupation forces comes in the way. On Tuesday, President George Bush declared again that he would not give a withdrawal date. This makes the US-led occupation look open-ended, making negotiations with the resistance forces that much more the task of winning the soft-difficult.
The talks can succeed only if the US convinces the resistance leadership of its sincerity about an early pull-out. The resistance, especially the Sunni leadership, should agree to take part in new elections provided it is held under the UN auspices. The present Iraqi government does not command much respect among the Iraqi people because the Jan 30 polls were held under US occupation. The UN’s non-involvement in the post-war situation in a significant way is the major cause of anarchy in Iraq. The best course would be to induct a UN peacekeeping force in phases so as to synchronize with a US withdrawal. Once the US withdrawal is complete, the UN can organize an election. Only polls held under the UN supervision will be considered fair by the Iraqi people and the world.
THE Punjab government’s decision to establish 11 consumer courts in various cities of the province during the next fiscal year is a long-awaited welcome step. The government has allocated an initial amount of Rs100 million for the establishment of consumer courts, which will eventually be set up at all district headquarters. The plan is part of a $300-million Asian Development Bank-sponsored Access to Justice Programme. The absence of a consumer protection mechanism in the face of growing commercialization and aggressive marketing undertaken in recent years by manufacturers and service providers has been a gaping hole in the way trade, commerce and the provision of utilities and services are being handled. The provincial assembly had passed the Punjab Consumer Protection Act, 2005, in January, under which consumer courts will now come into being. The new law binds the courts to decide cases filed with them within six months.
In a country where laws dating back to the colonial period absolve public sector organizations, among them utilities, of accountability to the general public, the establishment of consumer courts is expected to help redress people’s grievances. A provision of the consumer protection act also allows consumers to challenge the price at which a certain product or a service is being made available. This will help check profiteering, hoarding and black marketing of everyday commodities. Another provision of the law enables the consumers to seek monetary compensation from a utility — a power company, for instance, in case faulty power supply causes damage to their electronic appliances. It is expected that the imposition of top-heavy tariffs and surcharges arbitrarily effected by utilities, and which have been a cause of much distress among people with limited income, will also be challengeable under the new law. This is the right way to move towards a market-based economy and shed some of the anomalies imposed by the prevalent system, dating back to times when governments were responsible for providing basic amenities and social services at a nominal cost. The lead taken by Punjab in addressing these vital consumer-rights issues should set an example for other provinces.
WHILE the protection of wildlife has never figured on our list of priorities, not even with the relevant authorities, the Sindh wildlife department must be given credit for making sustained and committed efforts for the conservation of Pakistan’s marine turtles — specifically, the green sea turtle and the olive ridley variety. But despite their best efforts, it appears that the wildlife authorities have not been able to prevent poachers from killing these endangered species. An indication of this comes from a report carried in this newspaper that customs officials seized 3.6 tonnes of turtle meat bound for Vietnam, where it is considered a delicacy. Obviously, there is little one can do to reduce this kind of demand in the international market. All efforts to protect the species must be made at home, while urging other countries to respect the clauses of CITES, the global convention that seeks to strictly regulate international trading in
endangered species of flora and fauna.
But without the necessary resources or funds, there is little a small team of conservationists, however dedicated, can do to spread awareness about marine wildlife, especially when the government takes little interest in the matter. Although Sindh’s wildlife legislation provides for the protection of sea turtles by banning their hunting and trade, the poor enforcement of this law has resulted in a situation where exporters, involved in the trading in turtles, their flesh and body parts, operate with impunity. All the while, the government chooses to look the other way, placing monetary interests above environmental concerns, and flouting its own laws in the process. The latest incident must not be allowed to go unchecked and should be made the basis for further investigation of firms engaged in illegal trade of the country’s wildlife. Otherwise, already endangered species like Pakistan’s sea turtles might be lost forever.