KARACHI: PML-N defers protest on overthrow anniversary
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Oct 12: The PML-N, Sindh, on Wednesday turned its protest day programmes into a relief drive by mobilizing its all resources to help victims of the natural calamity that struck many parts of the country on Saturday.
The party had earlier chalked out a programme for observing a ‘black day’ on Wednesday, to mark the anniversary of October 12, 1999, when Nawaz Sharif government was toppled by General Pervez Musharraf.
Besides holding Quran Khwani and fateha for thousands of people who died in the worst-ever earthquake in the history of Pakistan, the PML-N further activated its workers to collect and send emergency aid to Islamabad, Northern Areas, Balakot, Bagh, Muzaffarabad and other quake-hit areas. The workers have already set up relief camps across the country to collected essentials of life, including bottles of clean water, blankets, medicines, clothes, dates, pulses, rice, sugar, milk, etc., and are making arrangements for the dispatch of relief goods to Mansehra, which they have declared ‘Sharif Relief City’, as a centre to distribute the relief goods among quake victims.
Sardar Rahim, a former MPA and a member of the PML-N central committee, informed Dawn in a communication that the decision to convert the protest day into a mobilization drive to help quake victims so that PML workers’ energies were utilized in carrying out relief activities was in line with the ARD’s decision to suspend all political activities in view of the natural calamity and the appeal by the alliance to all parties to join in the relief efforts.
In Mansehra and Azad Kashmir, there are many areas still inaccessible for rescue teams even several days after the quake hit the northern areas. Countless people are believed to have buried alive under tonnes of rubble. Sardar Rahim apprehended that the casualty figure might cross 100,000 mark as scores of quake-hit villages had still remained cut off from the rest of the country in terms of communication.
He said that the party had received information from the Sharif Relief City that survivors in many quake-hit areas immediately needed potable water and fuel and if immediate measures were not taken in this regard, it would be very difficult to save them.
