| July 26, 2008 | Saturday | Rajab 22, 1429 |
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Defaming Barack Obama
Afghan repatriation
Appeal to coalition partners
Import of buses from India
No specialist doctor in Thar
Mealy bug menace
Inept
Dialysis Machines lying idle
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
THIS is apropos of the report concerning the government move to establish a national commission on human development, with the major task of creating jobs for the youth.
Here I would like to point out that similar commissions were formed previously but their outcomes, relevance and sustainability remained at the mercy of upcoming political governments.
In 2001 the president of Pakistan established a Task Force on Human Development to suggest ways to tackle Pakistan’s chronically poor human development indicators.
The Task Force identified the lack of capacity, lack of community participation, poor planning and coordination, and lack of resources as some of the reasons for underdevelopment.
Its recommendations included the setting up of a national commission to provide implementation support at the grassroots’ level.
Consequently, the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) was formed in July 2002 and currently it is working in 114 districts throughout Pakistan.
According to its strategy, the NCHD takes a holistic approach to human development, focusing on the people’s needs rather than individual service sectors. It works through existing frameworks, building capacity, raising awareness, promoting community participation and volunteerism, and encouraging public-private partnerships.
The NCHD’s core programmes are in education and healthcare. Education programmes include the Universal Primary Education, Adult Literacy Centres, Non-formal Basic Education and Community Feeder Schools. Healthcare programmes include ORS Training, Primary Healthcare Extension, School Health Programme and Basic Health Education.
The NCHD also has programmes for capacity building and promoting volunteerism.
The NCHD has long lists of achievements which include: reopening of thousands of closed schools, training of teachers, health and hygiene promotion throughout the country under its National ORS Programme, training of elected representatives under its capacity-building programmes, promotion of volunteerism and resource mobilisations for community development, etc.
There could be plenty of criticism about the working of the NCHD, its achivements and its politicisation by the previous government. Also, there may be room for further improvement in it but there does not seem to be any justification for throttling the NCHD by stoppage of its funding by the present government just because it was created by the previous government.
This stoppage of funding has already resulted in the retrenchment of more than 22,000 low-paid employees of the NCHD whose bread and butter solely depends on their job and further threatening the future of an equivalent number of employees.
The government should stop the creation of any new commission and instead restructure or establish a new wing in the NCHD with the proposed task of creating jobs for the youth across the country.
This will save the government the extra amount involved in the establishment of new infrastructure, avoid disturbance in attainment of MDG targets committed to the UN and similarly, the future of the NCHD employees.
AZHAR GHUMRO
(NCHD employee)
Karachi
KHALID Chaudhry in his letter (July 14) says: “American historian Daniel Pipes, who is also known for his pro-Israeli views, says that Barack Obama would not be able to make peace with the Islamic world.”
This is a thoughtless and biased conclusion drawn by the historian. Obama is not only an American requirement, it is the entire world which needs a leader like Obama who has all the qualities of a great world leader.
The Americans in general and the world at large do not assess a leader by the colour of the skin or the rituals he performs. Those who want to stick to the status quo have no head and those who assess Obama by peeping into his personal life have no heart. These are Putin's words which I have suitably altered to convey my point, but Putin has said this in a different context pertaining to the break up of the USSR.
Being a student of American history, I have read about all the American presidents, and in Obama I find a happy blend of all the qualities of great presidents of America and other world headers who have changed the course of history for the good of mankind.
Those historians or scholars who assess Obama in a narrow funnel have got to get out of the shell which their forefathers took centuries to break. Recall the dream which Dr Martin Luther King had visualised.
In the history of mankind the world has never been so dangerous and unsafe as it is today. It needs a leader who is out of the ordinary to lead it to peace. Mediocrity in the past seven to eight years has brought the world at the dangerous edge.
Obama has already been chosen by the law of nature to lead the world, now it is up to voters to elect their leader. I feel pity for such thinkers and scholars who divide the world into various worlds. It is only one world and all human beings live in it and they are all alike. It is the animal world which has different species, which have different tails and trunks.
We need a leader who is loved and respected rather than feared and hated. The world has seen enough of ‘shock and awe’ which has bounced back on its initiators.
In Obama I find a reflection of Lord Tennyson’s words:
For I dipt into the future far as human eye could see
Saw the vision of the world and all the wonders that would be.
BRIG (r) QURBAN ALI BARLAS
Rawalpindi
I WOULD like to clarify some facts reported in the article, “Afghans’ repatriation to resume soon: UNHCR” (July 24).
The article misquoted the Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Pakistan, Guenet Guebre-Christos, and wrongly suggested that the voluntary repatriation of Afghans in Pakistan was suspended.
In fact, the UNHCR-assisted return operation to Afghanistan is ongoing and has helped more than 185,000 registered Afghans to repatriate voluntarily from Pakistan so far in 2008. This process will continue until the end of October this year, after which there will be an annual winter break of four months, starting again in March 2009.
More than 3.4 million Afghans have been assisted home from Pakistan since the return operation started in 2002.
In the last seven years, the UN refugee agency has spent nearly $130 million on repatriation assistance and just under $600 million on reintegration projects in Afghanistan to enable sustainable returns.
Under the tripartite agreement signed by the governments of Pakistan, Afghanistan and UNHCR, the three parties agreed that repatriation must be voluntary and gradual, taking into consideration the situation in Afghanistan, including its security situation and absorption capacity.
The people and government of Pakistan have hosted Afghan refugees for nearly 30 years. UNHCR is grateful for this generous hospitality and is working on projects to ease the burden on refugee affected and host communities.
VIVIAN TAN
Senior Regional Public Information Officer, UNHCR
Islamabad
INITIATING a dialogue between coalition partners is a positive move by the government. Such meetings should continue to occur. The prevailing condition in our country demands more interaction between coalition partners.
Now it is time the ruling party took the other partners into confidence irrespective of their strength in parliament. The people have given the mandate to political parties to resolve their problems, and not to fail this time.
I must say that both the major political parties in the government have the capacity to deliver, now it is up to them to avail themselves of the opportunity and make history by doing something not only for the poor but also for the middle class.
The country is passing through a very difficult time, inflation is getting higher day by day and forcing people to commit suicide, mothers are forced to sell their children because they have nothing to feed them.
Above all, the menace of terrorism is getting out of hand. People are being kidnapped for ransom. The law and order situation is getting worse day by day. It is time the two major parties mended their ways and provided relief to the common man.
AITIZAZ MASOOD KHAN BANGASH
Lahore
A SHIFT of traffic from privately-used cars to well-maintained clean public buses and wagons in Pakistan should help save a lot of national money.
In the above context, the government’s acceptance of the need for decent public transport buses is very welcome.
But the announcement that used buses of up to 10 years of age will be allowed to be imported from India is deeply disturbing.
The policy should have been to try, in the first place, to reinvigorate the local auto industry for manufacturing the buses here in Pakistan on an urgent basis, which can help create productive jobs and strengthen the local industry.
Expanding upon the available infrastructure of the local auto assembly plants, drawing their foreign principals in the loop, the objectives can be achieved with additional benefits to the economy.
If the urgency of the matter requires quick import of used buses, we must do it
with due discretion: buses which have been used in any country for commercial service for nine years are not too different to junk, ready for scrapping. Please compile a list of countries which allow public bus service by 10-year-old vehicles and you will learn a lot.
Or is the government planning to start a new business line: ‘bus-breaking’ for the people laid-off from the failing ‘shipbreaking’ industry in Pakistan.
The standard of roads in India is only marginally better than in Pakistan, and the level of maintenance, for the most part, is also not extremely higher than ours.
Then what are we investing in? If there was a well-audited/well-structured scheme to import up to five years’ old used buses in good condition from Japan or similar other countries, it would be a different matter.
The roads there are much better, maintenance quality is superb. You can, generally, expect a residual useful life even for their discarded five-year old buses but not for the nine-year-old buses from India.
I have great respect for Indian industry and their industrial leadership: we must expand our bilateral trade with India, for obvious mutual benefits and our trade volumes should rise hundred-fold. But we must be judicious in our choices, decision-making, and be mindful of the consequences for our local industry, the employment generation scenario, and aim at getting the best for our money’s worth.
I will invite your readers to demand that the buses to be imported from India, or wherever, must not be older than five years and in good working condition and this import should be limited for a short period pending the outputs from indigenous auto plants.
NASEEM ALTAF
Islamabad
NO specialist doctor is willing to work in Thar district’s hospitals, to the great agony of local people.
According to the Thar district health office, a number of posts of doctors in various hospitals have been lying vacant for the last many years.
The authorities concerned have tried their best to appoint doctors against the vacant posts but to no avail, because the doctors concerned would either go on medical leave or approach the competent authority to get transferred to a place of their choice.
In the absence of specialist doctors the Thari people have to face many difficulties.
The provincial health minister and secretary of the health department should ensure appointments of specialist doctors in Tharparkar district.
Moreover, disciplinary action should be taken against those doctors who are unwilling to work in Tharparkar district.
MUSHTAQUE HUSSAIN GAJOO
Tharparkar
LEAF, stem and fruit of plants that appear dusted with white waxy powdery material is due to a disease caused by an insect called mealy bug. The bugs appear almost every year on mango trees but the strong and sturdy trees do not generally succumb to the attack.
This is to inform and warn the farmers and gardeners of the impending danger that during a survey work on the status of health of sunflower plants I have seen infection of mealy bugs on cotton, sunflower, brinjal, China rose, etc., in Sindh this year.
Last year there was a 40 per cent loss in cotton production due to the attack of mealy bugs in Pakistan (Dawn, Oct 17, 2007) and cotton had to be imported to feed the textile industries (agriculture-based industries).
There are reports of mealy bug attack on fruit plants (apricot, plum, peach, etc.) in the Northern Areas. It is urgently necessary to evolve a strategy to control mealy bugs before there is a widespread attack in the length and breadth of the country, causing great economic loss. This calls for timely action. A stitch in time saves nine.
DR. M. JALALUDDIN
Department of Agriculture, KU
IN his column, ‘Inept, so inept are we’ (July 20), Ardeshir Cowasjee has implicitly cautioned the readers not to rely much on opinion polls just because Russian pollsters have (seemingly unjustifiably) deemed Stalin to have been the second best ruler their country ever had.
Mr Cowasjee has apparently found it necessary to say this in reaction to the IRI survey recently reported in Dawn that notably confirmed things such as Mr Musharraf’s unpopularity, the majority’s demand for restoration of the judges, 82 per cent Pakistanis’ support for Nawaz Sharif and so on.
I would like to remind him that this isn’t the first survey conducted by the IRI and their earlier work had pointed out this trend, which turned out to be true regarding Mr Musharraf’s and PML(Q)’s fall from grace on Feb 18. Furthermore, other organisations, too, had come out with similar findings earlier on.
M. ALI
Karachi
I AM a teacher by profession and belong to Mokhar, a small village in the Thar desert. I have been suffering from kidney trouble for the last 20 years as I have kidney stones. The reason for these stones is said to be the consumption of brackish groundwater of the desert.
Despite my prolonged painful illness, I have continued to perform my duties of teaching poor children of the area regularly.
In 2005, doctors found my kidneys dysfunctional and recommended dialysis to survive further.
Since that day I am compelled to survive on dialysis, a mechanical process of separating the urea from blood, at least twice a week.
To get dialysis I undertake a four-hour journey to Diwan Farooq Medical Complex, Sujawal, Thatta, and back the next day.
The regular transport, accommodation and medicinal expenses pushed me under heavy debts of around Rs800,000 during the last three years. Being a teacher, I despair of my life and fear seeing my six children forced to quit their schools.
There are many others in Thar who suffer like I do from kidney ailment. It is an irony that the Civil Hospital in Mithi though equipped with dialysis machines has no technicians to cater to the need of the patients. As a result, the dialysis machines are gathering dust while the poor patients undergo agony.
It is my plea, along with hundreds of other Thari patients, to the authorities concerned to take appropriate measures to make the dialysis machines functional at the Mithi Civil Hospital in order to reduce the expenditure, painful travels and vulnerability of poor patients.
M. USMAN JUNEJO
Mokhar village
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