| September 10, 2007 | Monday | Sha'aban 27, 1428 |
Lack of responsive approach to problems of public
IT must come as a relief for a section of residents in Rawalpindi that a dilapidated 90-year-old road and pedestrian bridge in the city connecting it with the cantonment area is finally being rebuilt at the orders of a federal minister.
News of the removal of the political secretary to the Sindh chief minister Senator Ghaffar Qureshi and the PML-Q Sindh chapter’s women wing chief MPA Afshan Imran from their respective offices by Arbab Rahim was eclipsed amidst the ongoing political crisis regarding President Gen Musharraf’s re-election.
In normal times, the removal of the two would not only have made headlines in the evening newspapers, it would also have provided much material for gossip over a cup of tea for those who work the political circles.
During the year, it was the second incident where the chief minister had taken swift action to get rid of his close confidants. In January, he had fired his special secretary Chaudhry Mohammad Ali, who, before falling from grace for allegedly misusing his authority, was considered to be the de facto chief minister.
However, soon after his removal the power wielders rushed to his rescue and prevailed over the chief minister to send him for a course at the National Institute of Public Administration. After his return, he was posted as secretary of the Zakat and Usher department without any clarification about the fate of the charges levelled against him.
In the present case of Ghaffar Qureshi and Afshan Imran, the chief minister had acted after receiving reports against them in which they had accused each other of indulging in acts of “immorality.”
However, they accepted the decision of the chief minister as a fait accompli in order to continue to have access to the CM House for absolving themselves of the allegations.
On the basis of the evidential record provided by each of the complainants in support of his/her allegations, informed sources say the chief minister has taken it upon himself to find out the truth.
But political circles have termed his action a way to unload political liabilities in the party that is already under immense pressure from the reports of a political deal between PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto and President General Pervez Musharraf.—Habib Khan Ghori
Givers can be choosers
There were times when left-leaning students used to hang posters in their hostel rooms inscribed with a famous saying of Latin American liberation theologian Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara.
He said: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
Unfortunately, the city of Karachi has very few saints offering food to the destitute and even less people asking why so many people have resorted to beggary.
In 2002, the city district government had launched a crackdown against vagrancy and arrested more than 3,000 “professional beggars,” who included women and children.
The then city nazim Niamatullah Khan had said: “The action against them had become necessary because the professional beggars had been causing inconvenience to people at the roundabouts and other places besides creating other social evils.”
Since then, however, the number of beggars has risen sharply and they can be found everywhere, begging along the city roads and streets.
Come the holy month of Ramazan, Karachians witness thousands of differently-abled people (not just the disabled or handicapped or special persons, mind you), from old men and women to little children, begging in markets and alongside almost all the roads and streets of the city.
Among them we can easily see some drug addicts and even perfectly healthy persons mobbing motorists and knocking on their car windows for alms. They also create hurdles in the smooth flow of traffic.
Some women beggars even carry their babies under the scorching sun, putting their lives in danger. They become a source of irritation to the wealthy elite as they ruin the nation’s image in the world.
Hailing from underdeveloped or deprived areas (not the backward areas) of the country, these Pakistanis have become professional beggars. Many of them even come from city slums and katchi abadis.
Here comes to mind the city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) where no man, woman or child with insufficient means goes hungry thanks to the Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa.
How fortunate was the city of Calcutta where the noble mother left the teaching profession and began tending to the poorest of the poor — the sick, the dying, beggars and street children.
When Jesus ordered her in an apparent vision during a trip to Darjeeling to help the poor, she came back to Kolkata and started in her new quest.
About her first day on the job, she said: “The old man lying on the street — not wanted — all alone just sick and dying — I gave him carborsone and water to drink and the old man — was so strangely grateful… Then we went to Taltala Bazaar, and there was a very poor woman dying I think of starvation more than tuberculosis... I gave her something which will help her to sleep. I wonder how long she will last.”
Here in the city of Karachi, terribly enough, many journalists — supposedly ‘the best of the best’ — are also prejudiced against people with insufficient means.
Almost all newspapers, from eveningers to national dailies, publish photographs of beggars bothering motorists on the roads of Karachi.
This is a city which has its own share of professional swindlers, muggers, mobile and purse snatchers. Strangely, the city elite and the middle class seem to be at ease with the political blackmailers and extortionists.
Until Karachi produces people like the ‘saint of the gutters,’ and the ‘banker to the poor,’ Karachians have to choose themselves how to help the people with insufficient means, which would ultimately end the menace of beggary.—Manzoor Chandio
Compiled by Syed Hassan Ali
Email: karachian@dawn.com
The narrow old bridge at Chak Madad Khan, built in 1917 and which could hardly even handle one-way traffic, has been demolished to make way for a new and wider bridge which reportedly will be built in 10 months at a cost of Rs11.46 million.
It is hoped, however, that the desire to complete the project quickly within a specified time (in order to win public accolade at the new bridge’s ribbon-cutting ceremony!) will not compromise on the lifetime safety and structural integrity of the new bridge.
Despite much improvement in major roads in the city, residents in Rawalpindi have already been suffering under the shoddy quality of many roads that are broken no sooner after they are built and opened to the public because of problems like design, public bidding, construction and/or supervision in these projects.
A prominent photograph in an English daily yesterday showed the precarious Kumhar Road which had remained damaged for over a year and was eroded even further by recent rains. The relevant authorities have promised to complete repairs and re-open the road in 20 days. Can this really be done without compromising on the quality of the new structure?
A newly constructed and recently opened road broken and flooded with rain water was the subject of another photograph of a street in Sadiqabad in another English daily last week. This is not an uncommon scene in some localities of Rawalpindi. Such roads are not only a nuisance for citizens to drive on but can also be accident-causing.
What is perhaps interesting about the Tang Pul case is that the bridge is at last being rebuilt not so much because of demand by residents who have long been complaining about the bridge to no avail, but because the federal minister in question had happened to take that route and encountered the problem himself.
Does this mean that other civic and infrastructure problems in Rawalpindi will also remain unattended to until and unless a high government official chanced upon the area and experienced the problem himself?
There are many other problems worse than that posed by Tang Pul which residents in Rawalpindi are facing. One example reported in Dawn last week is the stinking muddy mess at the city’s busy Katchehry bus stop which has long been irking the public.
Apart from the stench and health hazard posed by the stagnant water mixed with contents from a leaking sewage pipe nearby and garbage thrown by shopkeepers and the general public, the unsightly area around the bus stop — which itself is a picture of neglect with its broken shed, walls and iron grills — is obstructing traffic, causing troublesome traffic jams for the public in the vicinity of the busy city courts.
Another pressing problem highlighted in the press last week is that being faced by the students, parents and staff of two educational institutions, a government high school and a college, situated next to each other in Dhoke Kashmirian.
Both being old and dilapidated, and worse still surrounded by a pool of health hazardous stagnant water which may well be damaging the foundation of the buildings, there is every fear that the structures may collapse anytime, especially during a bout of heavy rain.
Neither has the Water and Sanitation Agency been able to drain out the pool of water, nor have the relevant authorities responded to the principals’ request to repair the buildings and the blocked sewage system in one of the institutions.
Another longstanding problem faced by the tens of thousands of commuters in the twin cities is the lack of a reliable and efficient public transport system. Not only are properly sheltered bus-stops lacking along the routes, particularly in Rawalpindi, the current system of dilapidated, non-air conditioned, low capacity and overloaded vans and wagons, the drivers of which often do not complete their scheduled routes and demand passengers to get off at will, has made the lives of commuters very difficult, especially women and students.
There are countless many other problems being faced by residents which because of the lack of a more alert, responsive and responsible approach by both local and provincial governments and their respective departments in attending to genuine public complaints, the people continue to be deprived of relief from their sufferings.