| June 02, 2008 | Monday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 27, 1429 |
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Relief for salaried persons
Returns on savings
A peculiar mindset
Let’s call a spade, a spade
Peace deal with militants
Minority rights
PIA managing director
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
WITH the democratically-elected government in the saddle, it is hoped the system of higher education will be overhauled and cleansed of all the mess of last eight years of dictatorial rule.
In democracies education holds key to national progress. It is an important tool of social transformation. Unluckily, in our country the progressive character of education has deliberately been mutilated by the various dictatorial regimes.
Dictatorships always suppress the politically articulate classes of society and in this regard the students, being the most vocal segment of society, become the main target. During the Zia period education was neglected and the dictator virtually handed over universities to intelligence agencies.
Students unions were banned and academic freedom was curbed. Further to control the campuses, military generals and bureaucrats were appointed as vice chancellors, especially in universities which were centre of political struggles against his autocratic rule.
When Pervez Musharraf grabbed power in 1999, he continued with the same policies of Zia but in a different manner. He posed himself more in the light of populist and liberal dictator who was committed to democracy, rule of law, freedom of the media and development of education as key to national development on the pattern of authoritarian model of East Asia, in which education had been given top priority in the 1990s.
But the main difference between Mr Musharraf’s model and the East Asian model was of ‘governance’ – East Asian model of governance was more accountable, politically non-partisan and economically judicious whereas his model of governance was more partisan, corrupt and non-accountable.
However, to reform higher education, Mr Musharraf formed the HEC in 2002, giving it more autonomy and powers to unilaterally impose policies on public-sector universities. On the pattern of the notorious ‘Structural Adjustment Programmes’ of the IMF, the funding was conditioned with adoption and implementation of HEC conditionalities. Like SAPs, which have produced economic poverty in developing countries where SAPs are running, the HEC reforms have produced academic poverty, corruption and bad governance in most of the academically sick universities.
While implementing its reforms, the HEC has adopted ‘cookie-cutter approach’ of putting the Pakistani universities in the league of 500 world top universities overnight. The HEC stance, based on the notion that ‘one size fits all’ and delivering the ‘same medicine’ to each ailing university, has played more havoc with the system of higher education, breeding unprecedented corruption than bringing any fundamental change in the already dilapidating system, despite having spent billions of rupees on the mega projects.
It is ridiculous that universities which are bereft of basic infrastructure are running very expensive projects just for the benefit of a few individuals who happen to be well connected to the project mafia in the HEC. There should be proper auditing of the HEC funds.
The new democratic government should assign top priority to education because without a sound educational system the socio-economic condition of the people won’t improve. More than that, democracy won’t take roots and stabilise. For education, democracy and development are intrinsically interconnected and reinforce each other.
Benazir Bhutto was right when she said in her book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West, that democracy cannot be sustained in the absence of stable and growing middle class .... and the first key to develop the middle class is to build an educational system that allows children to rise to a higher social and economic status than their parents.
In other words, an educational system that delivers hope and real opportunity is a prerequisite for democracy. It was for this reason that she had stressed the need for greater investment in education and health to produce more healthy and literate population.
The PPP government should take steps to improve governance so that the goals can be achieved as articulated by Ms Bhutto in her book.
MANZOOR ALI ISRAN
Shah Abdul Latif University
Khairpur
BUDGET 2008 must be under preparation and many minds put together must be trying their utmost to make a document which can increase state revenue to match the ever-increasing financial needs of the country. In this letter I will not discuss types and justifications of those financial needs because this is not the main subject of my letter.
I am a salaried person in private employment whose income is salary only, having no source (rather aptitude or mentality) of earning through illegal and unfair means and having no side business and having nobody to provide financial assistance in any form. Just sole salary earner who has to meet all financial responsibilities of a family. I believe there are a lot of people like me in this country.
Salaried persons are required to pay income tax as per law if their income exceeds a certain limit. Unlike any other category of taxpayers, 100 per cent tax is deducted at source from their earning. Unlike other tax payers, they cannot understate their income. Not all salaried persons are lucky enough to get regular annual increase in their salary. Even increase in their salary cannot do any good to them because by then increase in cost of living is manifold.
Unlike salaried persons, all other earners, whether they are under the tax net or outside the tax net, can increase their inflow of money whenever they want. They may be manufacturers, traders, retailers or services providers.
The moment they see cost rising around them, they immediately come into action and make a more than corresponding increase in price of their products. As a result, increasing cost of living does not affect them, rather at times such situation proves more fruitful for them.
I see so many people (so-called small-time vendors and shopkeepers) who do business, yet do not pay any income tax. Is there no provision in income tax law to tax their income?
In a budget, relief is usually provided to government employees and to some extent to industrial workers by enhancing minimum wages. But it is very rare that relief is provided by government or employers to other employees working in the private sector.
I was in Bahrain for six years (1978 1984 ). Prices of essentials like flour, sugar, rice, cooking oil, milk powder, mutton, etc., were controlled by government. No seller would increase their prices without government clearance. It is time salaried persons got relief by way of tax exemption of salary income without any ceiling.
Or if the government is so dependent on tax collected from salaried persons, at least the basic exemption limit should be increased from Rs150,000 to Rs500,000. Loss of state revenue as a result of such change can be much more than compensated by bringing the so-called small-time vendors and shopkeepers under the tax net.
AYUB SAQIB
Lahore
WITH the excruciating rise in inflation, the plight of the pensioners, other retired personnel, the widows and people with low earnings has become increasingly unbearable. Even the State Bank governor has recently admitted that the food inflation during the past one year has been 26 per cent, which is the highest in Pakistan’s history.
The general inflation is also in the double digits, while the actual figures are likely to be higher in both cases. In view of this and with the next budget to be announced shortly, Finance Minister Syed Naveed Qamar is urged to do something for the above-mentioned segments of society, to make life easier for them.
A few suggestions are presented with respect to the various national savings schemes, which are the sole means of subsistence for many Pakistanis.
a. The return on the Khas Deposit Certificates, which used to be 16 per cent per year and had been reduced to nearly 11.5 per cent by the Shaukat Aziz government, ought to be increased to at least 14 per cent.
b. For the Behbud Certificates, there is a condition that if these are encashed before the expiry of four years, a penalty is imposed, whereas this period is three months for the Khas Deposits. It is suggested that the time bar should be brought down to about six months, if at all unavoidable. Another helpful thing would be to end the penalty if the amount is reinvested.
c. Some of the other schemes, such as the Defence Savings Certificates and the Special Savings Certificates employ a deduction of 10 per cent withholding tax on the profit if the invested amount is over 150,000. This should be raised to a minimum of Rs500,000 or Rs1 million.
The PPP has always championed the cause of the downtrodden sections of our society and it is hoped that its leadership would earn their prayers and good wishes by remembering these folks in the new budget, who are faced with malnutrition and lack of proper healthcare, among other things.
A RETIRED CITIZEN
Karachi
IN his letter (May 20) Mr Ahsanullah has criticised Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur for his views (article, May 13) about the PAF’s testing ranges in Balochistan.
Mr Ahsanullah criticises him for not being considerate to Pakistan’s “minimal requirements of modern weapons” and for being averse to “huge Indian spending” on buying modern weapons.
One wonders how India came here as Mr Talpur was talking of the relationship between the state of Pakistan and the people living within it. This is a peculiar mindset that has ruled the rulers, and the people like Mr Ahsanullah, for the last 60 years. They see the things with anti-India spectacles.
Mr Ahsanullah accuses Mr Talpur of ignorance about the “dismemberment of Pakistan by India in 1971” while, in effect, he overlooks the fact that it was this India-specific mindset that made Pakistani rulers frame and follow such policies that alienated the people of the East Wing and then India exploited the situation to its advantage as always the ‘enemy’ countries do against each other.
Mr Ahsanullah says: “One mustn’t say such illogical things that will cause hatred for the government or the armed forces”.
I ask him: is it logical to say things that exhibit hatred for the people of a constituent unit of this country?
Criticising Mr Talpur’s love for environment and sympathy for the fauna and flora, Mr Ahsanullah writes: “The safety of the Pakistanis certainly takes precedence to that of the eagles, lizards, ibex and other creatures”.
On the same analogy the lives of the Baloch should take precedence over the testing of weapons.
ABDUL KHALIQUE JUNEJO
Karachi
IN 1999 while, inter alia, sacking his second Army Chief of Staff, Nawaz Sharif became a little innovative. He not only sacked Gen Musharraf when he was flying in from Colombo but also gave orders that his aircraft should not be allowed to land at any airport in Pakistan. The Karachi runway was blocked with bulldozers and fire engines.
The orders were conveyed to the captain of PIA flight PK-805 when he was less than 10 minutes from Karachi. Most of his fuel had been used up. With serious fuel constraints he could only fly to Ahmadabad or might barely make it to Bombay: both Indian airports.
As the incumbent Chief of General Staff, Gen Musharraf was the one man who was privy to every single detail of our secret defences: conventional and nuclear; missiles and warheads. After the recent Kargil affair he was also the one man whom the Indian Intelligence would have loved to lay their hand on.
With security implications detrimental to our very survival, should Gen Musharraf have accepted being mindlessly flown into Indian hands? Most people don’t think so. His hands, in fact, were literally forced into what happened next. But these are, of course, mere ground realities.
In the world of perceptions and cliches, a democratically-elected prime minister who had the support of 160 million Pakistanis was deposed by a ruthless general and the Constitution of Pakistan blatantly subverted on Oct 12, 1999. Most Supreme Court judges supported this subvertor and willingly took the oath under the first PCO, Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was one of them. M. Ali’s letter (April 24) in his support says: “Even God forgives those who repent for past mistakes but . . . . . .” So Let’s absolve Justice Iftekhar for taking that oath.
But he took the oath again and even accepted promotion to chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
Let’s absolve him again.
The fact remains that an assignment or promotion immediately after the military takeover was not exactly legitimate. However, Justice Iftikhar began and continued to enjoy the privileges of the office of justice and then chief justice for several years under Gen Musharraf, right up to March 2007. Then when the ‘reference’ was filed against him, he took a stand and refused to resign.
But you get credit when you decline to accept a tainted privilege, not if you refuse to give it up. Justice Iftikhar happily enjoyed all the pomp, perks and privileges under the patronage of a general for years, how can we reward him now for not wanting to part with them.
He led night-long ‘juloos’ from city to city, blackcoats spilling over and slogan-raising mobs in tow. Opposing lawyers were manhandled. The Supreme Court was mobbed. Lives were lost. Judges even avoid dinner invitations where a dubious gathering is likely. Our chief justice thrived on leading “juloos” from one end of the country to the other.
This entire drama was started when the reference was served and he was asked to resign. Suppose for a moment that the reference was not served at all, ever. And he was never asked to resign. He would then have continued as before in amicable cooperation with the general. Obviously his claim to staging all this ‘tamasha’ only for the honour and defence of the Constitution against its subvertor does not wash.
Both Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf had absolute power and made some absolutely weird decisions. The Supreme Courts were never safe during their tenures. The erstwhile chief justice has himself turned the whole country upside down, to get his job back.
Yusuf Raza Gilani and Shah Muhammad Qureshi are a fresh, sober team. Their past is without blemish. They deserve an unobtrusive and apolitical chief justice of the Supreme Court. A judge who has never said ‘yes’ to any PCO would be a good candidate.
CAPT. S. AFAQ RIZVI
Karachi
One would be too gullible to acquiesce to Omar Moonis’s logic that, since Mr Musharraf’s government tried reaching a peace deal with militants in the north, only to abandon disappointingly soon, this government too would end up in the same spin-off.
Mr Musharraf’s government may have been inept as alleged, negotiating with anti-American belligerents under American surveillance. The present government, representing on the contrary the people of Pakistan and negotiating on their behalf, obviously has an edge to strike a peace deal.
Shedding each other’s blood in the name of establishing the government’s writ served no interest, except by default encouraging their self-serving witchhunt. It is too early and also inappropriate to sound pessimistic note at this early stage of interlocution.
Moreover, Mr Moonis’s comments deriding spiritual (Sharai) aspirations of the northern tribes, seeking to earn heaven as Mr Moonis put it, through their handed-down religiosity as prescribed, is uncalled-for and unacceptable. Just as Mr Moonis has the right to be non-conformist if he wishes, so have these tribes the right to be creedal.
AKBAR KHAN
Karachi
With reference to your poignant and timely editorial of May 29, I would like to narrate two anecdotes to illustrate how different societies treat their minorities.
I was in the USA around Christmas time. Everywhere in shops and restaurants, I received the greetings of ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’. When I asked for the reason, I was told that they did not want to offend non-Christians. On the other hand I was pleasantly surprised to see US postage stamps with the message of ‘Eid Mubarak’.
Also, a Pakistani lady who lives in the UK, recently travelled to Qatar to see her relatives. She was advised by her hosts not to go out in shalwar-kameez, because she would be treated shabbily by the Qataris, because of that dress. Yet here in the UK, she can go to shops or hospitals etc without feeling embarrassed on wearing shalwar-kameez.
It may not be fashionable to quote western examples, but we must learn from wherever we can.
KHALID A.
London, UK
THIS is apropos of a news item (May 8) about the appointment of PIA’s new managing director and an article by Mr Kunwar Idris (May 18) indicating ties of Capt Aijaz Haroon with the ruling elite.
An editorial (May 26) states: “It has been saddled with an MD who appears to owe his appointment less to his credentials and more to his standing in the political quarters now calling the shots”.
While the editor has done valid criticism and has given very constructive suggestions for improvements like fleet modernisation, routes rationalisation and aggressive marketing, the induction of Boeing 777s and the ATRs is a step towards fleet modernisation.
I tend to disagree with the editorial as regards its reservations about the new MD’s credentials. Having been associated with the national airline for more than 30 years, with vast and varied experience as a flyer, he has been chief pilot of F-27 aircraft and currently a B-777 pilot. He has held senior management positions in PIA like general manager of airport services, general manager of central control and director of airport services. Capt. Haroon is very energetic and dynamic.
He knows PIA like the palm of his hand and it will be easier for him to find solutions as he knows the right people for the right job. The appointment of an insider after so many years has been the best thing to happen to the airline as any management or financial wizard would take initial years only to understand such a big organisation while still depending on others.
The decision to fly 747-300 was correct because the airline had invested heavily in the refurbishment of its interior and engines and there was no point in grounding them.
All successful airlines increase their capacity and add more routes to be profitable. A business flourishes only when you expand and have growth, and the MD is going in the right direction
PIA’s managing director being a very challenging appointment, only a person who enjoys confidence of the ruling elite will fit in the slot. Accepting such a position in difficult times when the airline’s financial health is miserable is a real challenge.
Capt. Haroon’s appointment has infused confidence in all cadre of PIA employees who have hailed his placement at the top slot. Obviously the human resource of an organisation is its biggest asset and with their support PIA will do much better than it could have done with someone else no matter how able that person may have been.
FORMER SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT
PIA
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