| June 15, 2007 | Friday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 29, 1428 |
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KESC’s worsening performance
Ataturk’s legacy
Food inflation
Sacred cow
Misuse of cellphones
Ayub’s diaries
Injustice in STBT
Pensioners of Defence Services
Siachen glacier
Highly commendable
Readers are requested to restrict their comments to a maximum of 400 words. We reserve the right to edit letters for reasons of clarity and space. Letters, including those by e-mail, should carry the complete postal address of the sender. The views expressed in these columns do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.—Editor
IT WAS interesting to hear the state minister for finance deliver the budget, particularly the part where he would every so often ask: “Which previous government has done so much for the people?”
If it had not been for the frequent interruptions in my cable transmission, on account of power failures, I would have counted the number of times he repeated his boasts. Just at the time when the minister was boasting about the ‘achievements’ of his government, many parts of Karachi were burning on account of power riots.
I would like to add a few more achievements to his list of boasts:
1. During which previous government did Karachi suffer from such acute power and water shortage?
2. During which previous government did Karachi suffer from a total failure of law and order as seen on May 12?
3. During which previous government did Karachi suffer from total lack of civic amenities, especially sewerage, like the present conditions in general and in Block 4, Clifton, in particular?
4. During which previous government did petrol prices or prices of household items reach such back-breaking levels?
5. During which previous government have so many utilities been handed over to the private sector without the due diligence of the bidder, particularly the KESC?
We can go on adding to this list.
ZAFAR AHSAN
Karachi
THE government is considering introducing subsidies on essential items through USC for poor people. Over 90 per cent of the population bearing taxes are poor while two per cent of the rulers and elite enjoy public wealth and resources. This means the tax is paid by 98 per cent but enjoyed by just two per cent.
Miseries and hardships are common because of the impact of the tax on the common person. A person earning Rs5,000 and another earning Rs200,000 are paying the same price for edible items and utility bills. Also all expenses become part of businesses and form cost of production. Businessmen never object to any increase in taxes because they charge all expenses to the cost of production and the impact falls on the consumers.
I suggest the government withdraw GST on all products forthwith. This measure will stabilise the price whereby the cost of production will decrease. Merely telling the milk or meat sellers to reduce their prices is not sufficient unless the government reduces the tax burden on other inputs which are responsible for the increase in the first place. There is no other way but to review the tax structure if the government wants to give relief to the common person.
TAJ MUHAMMAD
Karachi
THE privatisation of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation is one of the major disasters of the present government. Ever since it went in the hands of private owners, the corporation has taken a nosedive in its performance and service standards.
Living in the so-called posh area of Defence, we are faced with daily power outages spanning six hours or more spread over the day. The KESC complaint centre located at Badar Commercial Area is manned by people who do not have any idea of what is going on. More often than not, the staff casually informs that they are unaware of the reasons and duration of loadshedding.
The operations department, which according to the complaint centre is responsible for handling the loadshedding, is an obscure division within the KESC whose numbers are not given despite requests and whose staff does not interact with the customers. Complaint centres are only serving as dummy offices where people are either uninformed or least bothered to give out any information.
While the government is making tall claims of economic growth and prosperity in the country, the situation on the ground is not much to write home about. The biggest industrial and commercial hub of the country is without electricity for a significant part of the day with no recourse. The government, it seems, has actually given in to the management of the KESC.
The spokesman had blatantly and brazenly committed on the electronic media last year that there would be no loadshedding in next summers, a claim which the media has often repeated this year. It appears there is no one in the government to turn around and question the corporation for lying to the nation.
The government has maintained a strange silence over the matter and seemingly given the KESC, as well as Siemens, immunity from any form of accountability. From the president down to the chief minister, no one in the echelons of power has either shown genuine concern or taken any genuinely concrete step to resolve the matter.
The inept management of the KESC continues to hold fort despite failing miserably. Such criminal negligence, indifference and ineptitude only work in Pakistan. Had it happened in a civilised state, the whole nation would have stood up and thrown the management out.
I would like to ask the officials concerned, including the CEO of Siemens, CEO of the KESC and other senior management, to inform the nation if they are also braving the power outages or have generators installed in their homes? I can say with reasonable certainty that the day the bigwigs face the loadshedding the way we the common people do, the problem will be resolved within no time.
AMINAH FATIMA
Karachi
SEVKI Subasi’s letter (June 13), though undoubtedly sincere, was nevertheless misguided. If by calling for Pakistan to ‘separate religion from the state’ the writer advocated political atheism, i.e., realpolitik which does not recognise a higher law, in which national and international policies are framed only as is politically expedient, then many Pakistanis will not wish to accommodate it.
Secularism is a hypothetical construct, embodying universal ideals for some, but these have never been properly defined. Hence secularism means different things to different cultures.
In France, banning religious symbols such as crosses and headscarves in public offices is seen as a secular policy; in the UK it is viewed as a restriction of religious freedom and thus against secular policy.
Nor is there a single nation that well and truly behaves in a completely secular fashion. George W. Bush was voted president of the USA twice, based less upon his political aptitude and more upon his voters seeing him as a Christian leader.
The UK retains its monarchy, and the Queen has a religious as well as a political position. And despite its best efforts, including political and economic reforms, Turkey has yet to be admitted as a full member of the European Union, essentially because of the religion of its citizens and its geographical location.
Pakistan need not label itself secular for the sake of acceptance by the international community. It only needs to be faithful to what we hope the writer actually meant by ‘separate religion from the state’: upholding the civil rights of all, regardless of caste, colour or creed.
Anyone who studies history will find that these values, really being Islamic, were put into practice in Islamic civilisation, including in India. In the Mughal period Hindus frequently had prominent positions in governance, in finance and in the military, a fact that in recent times prompted Professor Garth N. Jones (1997) to call the Mughal Empire the world’s ‘first secular state’.
Strangely, Sevki Subasi’s letter ends not by looking to the future, but by looking back to a bygone era: ‘So my appeal to Pakistanis is that they should follow the example of Ataturk and separate religion from the state so that once again Muslims in Pakistan can enjoy what they did back in the Ottoman age.’ The Ottoman age? Is this irony, or a Freudian slip?
SALEENA KARIM
United Kingdom
THE news (Dawn, June 9) about 10 per cent inflation on food items is not in conformity with an agriculture country like Pakistan with 60 per cent of its population engaged in agricultural activity. Increase and decrease in food production due to varying weather conditions is beyond the control of man. We should try to promote agriculture under stressed abiotic condition in the prevailing circumstance.
There are some reasons for the low yield in Pakistan which can be overcome by means of land reforms, irrigation methods, and subsidies in fertiliser, pesticides and changes in agricultural machinery.
I am now afraid of the effect of global warming leading to the quick meltdown of Siachen glacier, climate change and its impact on Pakistan agriculture. The rise in temperature on June 9 up to 51°C, according to the weather report from Punjab and Sindh, may be attributed to global warming. Under the circumstance, there is a need for planning to deal with the vagaries of nature.
One method of meeting the abnormal situation is to store as much water as may be possible before the water quickly runs off from the Indus basin to the Arabian Sea. All that may be possible should be done to promote agriculture for our sustenance. Self-sufficiency in food is the best form of defence of a country.
DR M. JALALUDDIN
Karachi
This is with reference to the letter by Col (r) K.M. Ismail (June 13). I have great respect for Mr Aitzaz Ahsan, but I regret that he should have said what he said. Political differences with the army-led government are one thing, denying reality and hurting Pakistan's interest quite another.
The army's political role may be controversial, but that has nothing to with Indo-Pakistan relations which are 60 years old. India is Pakistan's enemy, is determined to destroy it, and will do everything possible to do it. After 9/11, it has gone into Afghanistan for no purpose other than stirring up trouble against Pakistan and to urge that fool - Hamid Karzai - to serve as their willing tool.
Col Ismail's criticism of Mr Ahsan is justified. This does not in anyway take away from my support for the PPP. Instead, I regret that Mr Ahsan should have said a thing that is contrary to the party's policy. I invite Ms Benazir Bhutto's attention to the nonsense uttered by one of her top party functionaries and take action against him.
RIZWAN YASSIN,
Karachi
THIS is to draw the attention of the ministry concerned toward the vices erupting from the influx of mobile phone communications in the last couple of years.
In the initial stages when mobile phones were introduced, there were checks applied to applicants to provide their personal details on the prescribed form of the mobile company. At that time the price of the SIM was kept high and, as a result, consumers did not mushroom. Decency, quality and courtesy was then maintained among the mobile users.
But as mobile companies increased and competition among them grew, all earlier checks and balances were withdrawn in favour of sales.
SIM cards became available for as low as Rs100. Gradually, these facilities led to misuse by criminals. Hand -to -hand mobile purchase and sales destroyed the identification system of the users. Bad calls, threats and other forms of misuse are employed by many who cannot be identified. Then they also choose to shut down their cellphones at will while their callers, some of them genuine claimants of a certain commitment between them, are denied access.
Also, they keep more than one cellphone and play the same tricks with another round of sufferers. They do that on purpose when they are in need of hiding or running away from a party, or person.
The menace has become alarmingly rampant among those who have little or no moral values: they greatly misuse the facility because they need not provide any address while buying cellphones. So, it is easier for such cellphone users to break commitments or agreements to the peril of the other party. I have personally sufferred on this count..
It is time the government regulated cellphone trade. Mobile companies should be asked to pronounce verification and authentication of all SIMs within three months.
For this purpose, drop box facility should be provided by all mobile companies to their users at various public places where a standard format of information published in the newspaper should be copied and completed by the users, along with a photocopy of their NIC. This procedure or a similar one will help mobile companies to carry out the verification and authentication of SIMs.
All those SIMS that will not be presented for verification within three months will stand cancelled at the end of the deadline. And in anticipation there will be many SIMs bought and sold hand to hand will never be presented for verification, thus making room for new business for the mobile companies. Those SIMs which could be verified successfully must be restored back. For all new SIMs the government should direct companies to fix a reasonably high price homogenously for all mobile companies, thus removing competition among them at this point.
The mobile companies should sell the new SIMs only after obtaining personal details of the applicant, supported by a copy of his national identity card.
Mobile companies should be made to develop control software so that if a SIM does not answer an incoming call five times consecutively, the SIM will be cancelled forthwith and made invalid for any further use of it. Thus a heavy penalty imposed on those who misuse of cellphones in this manner will help check the present attitude of free will to receive only selected calls.
The SIM holder should have the facility to report shutting off his SIM for a minimum number of days on the sole grounds of overseas travel for a maximum of 30 days. The caller should then hear a tape: user out of country till so and so date.
The sufferrers at the hand of a SIM holder should be provided the contact address of the SIM holder by mobile companies, at the reference of a police paper.
M. M. Khan
Karachi
COMMODORE (r ) Sajjad Haider has openly admitted in his letter (June 11) that Air Marshal Asghar Khan telephoned his opponent in India, Air Marshal Arjun Singh, suggesting that both air forces remain out of the Rann of Kutch operation that was intensifying in April 1965 without the knowledge of the president or the Army commander-in-chief.
Air Marshal Asghar Khan was due to retire during the fourth week of July 1965 but his orders for retirement were issued in the fourth week of April 1965 when fighting in the Rann of Kutch was still raging due to his unauthorised contact with the Indian Air Chief Arjun Singh.
I must mention that the role of the Pakistan Air Force under Air Marshal Asghar Khan in case of conflict with India was to gain air superiority. It was Air Marshal Nur Khan, the new Air Force chief, who included ground support to the army also as its role.
Commodore (r) Sajjad Haider should look at the book, Battle for Pakistan, The Air War of 1965, by John Fricker.
It was Air Marshal Nur Khan who gave full ground support to the army during the September 1965 war with India and also gained air superiority.
Commodore (r) Sajjad Haider assumes far too much. He will be kept busy when my book Glimpses into the Corridors of Power is launched on July 31.
GOHAR AYUB KHAN
Islamabad
I WOULD like to draw attention of the chief minister, the provincial education minister and the Sindh education secretary towards injustice, mess and nepotism in the Sindh Textbook Board.
Promotion has been due to some employees but denied. To assert their right, the employees appealed to the Sindh High Court and got justice.
The court directed the chairman of the Sindh Textbook Board to give due promotion to the employees concerned.
However, the then chairman referred the matter to the board of governors which also approved the due promotion of the employees.
One year has gone and three chairmen have been changed so far but the new chairman, using the technique of red tapism, has sent the matter to the board of governors once again.
The affected employees have also sent an application to the provincial ombudsman, but no reply has yet been received from him.
I request the higher authorities to look into the matter.
MOINUDDIN
Hyderabad
THE most sufferer community of pensioners is the civilians paid from Defence Services estimates. Except for a small amount of pension they are denied all types of relief, particularly medical aid. The Defence Services hospitals allow neither indoor nor outdoor treatment.
The pensioners being in old age suffer various diseases for which they require regular medical care. One can imagine how, in the absence of government medical aid, it is difficult for the elder and poor pensioners to afford expensive medical tests and treatment.
I am one of the affected pensioners. I am incurring expense of about Rs4,000 a month on oral medicine but when hospitalised it costs more than Rs4,000 a day. All civil departments provide medical facilities to their retired employees or medical allowance on a monthly basis, as allowed by the PCSIR.
The unfortunate are only the civilians of Defence Services. Should they expect any relief from the authorities concerned?
RIAZUL HASAN KHAN
Karachi
THIS has reference to Raghav Iyengar’s letter, ‘Danger of Siachen glacier’ (June 8). The writer thinks that it is sheer madness by both Indian and Pakistan armies to stay perched on such height in such hostile weather which is causing not only environmental degradation but also more deaths than enemy fire.
I think it is sheer madness to disagree with Mr Iyengar. Not to support his suggestion to demilitarise the region will also be insane. It is quite human that men make mistakes
To realise the mistake is wise. The Indian army foolishly captured the glacier in 1984 – only to nag the Pakistan Army.
Now, after realising that they have lost more men, more money and got nothing out of it, they must recommend to their government to settle this dispute with Pakistan so that both armies could come down from their igloos. The settlement of this one dispute, which will save a lot of money and material on both sides, will set in motion the process of resolving other remaining disputes.
M.K. NAQVI
Karachi
THE decision taken by the editor, or whosoever is responsible, of not showing the faces of those destitute ladies ((Metropolitan, June 12) )smuggled out of Karachi for being sold in the Gulf region as prostitutes is highly commendable. This non -sensational and respectful behaviour of people working for Dawn has given a mountain -high stature to this newspaper as opposed to all others.
NAQI MUSTAFA
Karachi
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