| October 22, 2008 | Wednesday | Shawwal 22, 1429 |
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Reforms and punishment
A question to Taliban
Cellphone towers
Superhighway repairs
The insult and the injury
A cause of concern for Pakistan
Reopening of the Marriott Hotel
ISPR clarifies
Is NAPA listening?
Unannounced loadshedding
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
THE economic crisis facing Pakistan is the most difficult so far. The silver lining is that it provides an opportunity to our leadership to prove that civilian leaders backed by the people can also provide solutions and lead the nation out of the crisis.
They should rise to the occasion while civil society formed by urban professionals and citizens working for welfare of various sections of society must provide guidance and support so that the elected leadership develops a strategy to surmount the difficulties we face.
While the government strategy of rebuilding our foreign exchange reserves by getting loans and grants from the World Bank, IMF and Friends of Pakistan must be pursued, time has come for us to recognise that unless we try and stand on our own feet, we will keep stumbling and begging and be at the mercy of the West.
The following steps are, therefore, suggested for the consideration of the national leadership as they have to take the lead so that the rest should follow in their footsteps:
1. The president, the prime minister and Nawaz Sharif should take the lead by announcing that they are repatriating $1 million to $100,000, according to what they can afford, into our banking system. This should not be a donation but will set a good example to be followed.
2. Following their lead all, chief ministers, ministers, MNAs, senators and MPAs should repatriate $50,000 to $10,000. It should once again be emphasised that these will not be donations.
3. A committee of elected representatives and civil society should be set up simultaneously to follow up on this as confidence will be restored in our economy and banks by these actions. A national effort should then be launched via Telethons through the media to exhort industrialists, traders, civil society and all patriotic Pakistanis to repatriate capital which has flown to the Gulf states in the last three months. As trust and confidence plays a key role in functioning of economic systems, confidence will surely be restored. The flight of capital which has occurred can be reversed specially now that the Dubai real estate bubble has burst. The importance of trust and confidence is illustrated by the fact that the Bangladeshi taka is valued at 70 to the dollar while rumours and loss of trust has decimated our currency.
4. Expatriate Pakistanis should be offered attractive and high rates of return if they repatriate capital to Pakistan. By offering higher rates when the western banking system is also in turmoil, they can be motivated to do so. A detailed plan in this regard has been prepared by us and can be unveiled at the proper time when our leadership desires.
5. Foreign exchange should only be available for import of essential items like oil, petroleum products and essential raw materials not available locally. Non-essential import of mobiles, foodstuffs like juices, cheese, milk, yogurts, jams, chocolates, automobiles, perfumes and electronics should be stopped until the situation improves.
6. Foreign exchange should only be released by money changers and the State Bank to genuine travellers with confirmed tickets and students.
The lead has to be taken by the present leadership whose government is actually at stake. If the slide of the rupee is not stopped, it has fatal implications not only economically but for the integrity of Pakistan as this could trigger riots in the country as the ordinary Pakistani does not have funds stashed abroad.
A national effort is needed but the rulers must lead the way for which they will get credit later on. Civil society and the media must play their part by motivating the citizenry. After all, 160 million people are not a small number. Even if five per cent, i.e. eight million, join hands through self-reliance, $5 billion can be brought into our treasury. This, coupled with efforts already launched to bring in funds from financial institutions and friendly countries, can provide a way out of the cul-de-sac we find ourselves boxed into. In this regard we have formed a Pakistan Citizens Movement for change which we intend to form in all big cities to start with. All civil society bodies are invited to join hands. Our civilian leadership has been provided with a golden opportunity to demonstrate that we can emerge as a self-reliant nation with our dignity intact. ‘Failure is not an option’.
AZIZ SUHARWARDY
Karachi
RECENTLY serious riots broke out in various prisons in Sindh. First, it was in Sukkur, then in Hyderabad and lately in Karachi. Both Central and Malir district prisons have braced a mutiny-like situation. These are the indicator that there is something very serious with the jail administration. In these riots people on both sides have lost their lives, leaving a large number of people injured.
I, therefore, tend to agree with your editorial, ‘Reforms and punishment’, that unless wide-ranging reforms are undertaken to make conditions at state detention centres more habitable, things will bound to deteriorate further.
While agreeing with the suggestions given in the editorial, I would like to lay more emphasis for the present crisis on ‘element of corruption’, which is the actual root cause of the afflictions.
It is an undeniable fact that this vice has crept into the jail system more deeply than any other segment of society. Although prisons are considered to be judicial lockups, to keep the prisoners in safe custody, both under-trial and those who are awarded punishment, yet their manner of treating the inmates belies their working mandate.
When a prisoner first enters a jail, a heavy bribe is demanded of him for not only providing him the otherwise legitimate facilities but also for not awarding him a corporal punishment. If somebody fails to pay the demanded sum, he has to suffer severe physical torture. So much so that even the periodical meeting with relatives, which is mandatory as per the jail manual, is not allowed unless palms of the jail staff are greased. In case the jail staff is happy, then even rigorous punishments are relaxed.
Normally prisoners are supposed to be kept in safe custody and provided such environment and discipline during the detention period that whenever they are released they act like useful citizens. But in reality things are quite different. After undergoing punishment, prisoners become hardened criminals and are lost to society.
I would suggest that before it gets out of hand the government should take up this issue more seriously and make an allout effort to eliminate the causes that are generating disturbances in the prisons.
QAZI BASHIR AHMED
Old Hala
THIS is with reference to the letter “A question to Taliban (Oct 20). Mr A. Hafeez is reasoning with cold-blooded murderers.
A criminal is a criminal, but the Taliban are doubly criminal because they are doing all this in the name of our beloved religion, Islam. For all practical purposes, they are Indian agents. Look how they specially target Chinese. That makes India terribly happy. It is also now established that India is giving arms and money to the Taliban.
All Pakistanis should unite against these terrorists and their backers in the “religious” parties and the media. Look how Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the Jamaat chief, has been opposing the mobilisation of tribesmen against Taliban rebels. He opposes this exactly because he has seen how the Taliban’s criminality has aroused the wrath of the common tribesmen and how they have risen against these enemies of Pakistan.
The Taliban represent a small minority, and the majority solidly approves of the government’s resolve to crush this rebellion. The general election of Feb 18 rejected the Jamaat and other Taliban-supporting religious parties and voted for all normal parties — the PPP, PML-N, MQM and ANP.
Pakistan should stay part of the US-led war on terror. India and its agents in Pakistan will be very happy the day Pakistan quits the war on terror.
RIZWAN YASSIN
Karachi
WITH the massive proliferation of cellphone users in the city, service providers are building transmitters in thickly-populated residential areas and thus posing a huge threat to local residents.
Studies have found that these towers have a variety of disastrous effects on people living within a 300-metre radius of the tower.
Even at low levels of radiation emitted by these towers, there is evidence of damage to cell tissues that has been linked to brain tumours, cancer, suppressed immune function, depression, miscarriage, Alzheimer’s disease and numerous other serious illnesses.
Children are at the greatest risk due to having thinner skulls. Also at greater risk are elderly, the frail and pregnant women.
Unfortunately, there is very little awareness among the general public of Karachi about the health hazards caused by cellphone towers installed in residential areas.
Cellphone companies are paying very handsome amounts to the residents who allow the companies to install cellphone towers on their houses.
But the residents who allow the cellphone companies to install the towers on their houses are committing a social crime in ignorance, and cellphone companies are party to this crime, having full knowledge of the disastrous effects of the cellphone towers.
The more unfortunate part is that no rules, regulations and standards are enforced by the local authorities, city government and the ministry of health to protect the citizens of Karachi, their families and children from the deadly adverse effects caused by cellphone towers.
I request the city nazim and the Sindh health secretary for their kind intervention in this critical matter of general public emergency.
I also request the professors of medical and engineering universities to help create public awareness on this critical subject.
MOHAMMAD FAHEEM
Karachi
THIS is apropos of Dr Kazi Khadim Hussain’s letter, ‘Superhighway needs urgent repair’ (Oct 11).
Nobody can deny the economic and commercial importance of the Karachi-Hyderabad Superhighway and the need to repair the highway on an urgent basis.
However, before blaming the National Highway Authority for any delay, one needs to take into account the facts which have actually caused hindrance in the execution of the project.
It was decided in 2006 to upgrade the existing four-lane highway into six-lane Motorway facility under BOT arrangement.
Consequently, Karachi-Hyderabad Highway (M - 9) was handed over to M/s SCC Pvt. Ltd in December 2006.
The contractor, however, failed to fulfil the codal formalities for financial closure after which its contract was terminated in July 2007. Later on, the contractor went to the court and took stay order.
As no funds were allocated for the project in PSDP allocation in FY2006 – 07 and FY2007-08, only minor repair works could be carried out in order to keep the highway in serviceable condition.
An amount of Rs248 million was approved in the last budget allocation for the improvement and rehabilitation of south-bound carriageway (Hyderabad-Karachi) whereas the repair work on the north - bound carriageway (Karachi-Hyderabad) is currently being carried out under the National Highway improvement programme.
PUBLIC RELATIONS DIRECTORATE
National Highway Authority
THIS is apropos of Javed Naqvi’s column, ‘The insult and injury’ (Oct 20). I have no idea what kind of quaint world Mr Naqvi lives in but let me give you a pragmatic view of the world.
He claims that Indians are insulted by the fact that the King of Saudi Arabia did not visit Rajghat. The truth is that these are purely symbolic gestures and are forgotten right away.
What matters to Indians, and what they would remember, is if the king said he would impose an oil embargo on India.
In other words, as a pragmatic people, we should hope to get certain things from certain people.
From the Saudis we hope to get oil, from Japan, America and Europe we hope to get funding and technology. From the Chinese we hope to be left alone in peace.
With Pakistan, we hope to have a productive relationship with lively exchanges of culture, music and literature.
Empty gestures like laying wreaths on concrete slabs do not matter a whit.
For example, does anyone remember the hue and cry that was caused when Bush visited Delhi, and his security people insisted on using their bomb-sniffing dogs to sweep Rajghat? I doubt it.
Today, Indians adore America for helping them to work their way out of poverty and economic stagnation.
The Americans understand that also. For their part, when Manmohan Singh visits the US, while they say they like his diplomacy or whatever, what they really hope to get from him is a contract signed for 150 billion dollars to buy American power plants.
In the same vein, if, in the future, President Obama comes to India and pays great respects to Gandhi but turns against outsourcing, trust me on this one, America will not be very popular.
B.K. VASAN
United States
FOLLOWIG the Sept 3 US-led ground troop incursion into Pakistan, there is a gathering consensus within the US that it must put its foot on the ground on the Pakistani soil in pursuit of militants. This unified resolve was on full display during President Zardari’s visit to the US.
On reaching the US, Mr Zardari went to great lengths to underline Pakistan’s seriousness in fighting the ‘war on terror’ while struggling to preserve its political and geographical sovereignty. But the official hardline dropped from the lips of Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, who bluntly told the US Congress committee that the US was well within its rights to strike deep into Pakistan territory.
Mr Zardari at his first news conference in New York said: “We have to increase the appetite for acceptance of (the fact) that we are in a state of war, and we cannot wish it away” (Sept 25).
If the war on terror really has us in that kind of grip, then for Pakistan’s people, if not a Pakistan government, it is Hobson’s choice whether the Pakistan dream succumbs to the onslaught of an increasingly violent or cultural and political superimposition from outside. For Pakistanis reject self-obliterating adjustment. The overall security situation in the country is gloomy. Implosion, economic meltdown and systematic upheaval are the abiding themes of public political discourse; and now a prospect of external aggression adds to the gloom.
The critical gravity of the situation can be judged that our Army is in a state of war, the police are running scared, military base camps are under attack, FIA is under attack, schools are shutting down, embassies are closing down, and on Oct 3 the UN and Britain have ordered evacuation of the children of their international staff from the federal capital to safer areas or to home from Pakistan.
The UN also raised the security threat level at phase III, for the capital and several other cities (Oct 4).
Our own proxies — Taliban and jihadis — are now waging a war on Pakistan itself and have killed over 10,000 Pakistanis in five years. It’s neither about religion nor about tribal traditions.
Our national defence strategy has long been dependent on the use of Taliban in the west and the jihadis pinning down elements of India’s hardline corps in the northeast.
After 9/11, we have lost at least two legs of our national defence strategy. As if losing two legs wasn’t enough, our jihadis and our Taliban, the very tools of our foreign policy, are on the loose. Our ex-proxies are hitting back at the very soul of Pakistan.
This is an active insurgency whereby our ex-proxies are struggling to suck the soul out of Pakistan and then hold physical terrain from where to effect their agenda.
Our one-time proxies have challenged the state for control of a portion of its territory. The outside world, in the meanwhile, is out to contain us and contain our violence from spreading.
Our national defence strategy has long been due for a major makeover. But, we have long been in a state of denial.
In a interview to Dawn, former Army chief Gen Mirza Aslam Beg has been quoted as saying that after the US and India signed a strategic partnership agreement four years ago, the US gave India the authority to establish in Afghanistan one of the largest spy networks for use against all the neighbouring countries.
Now the US has signed another agreement that by the end of next year that they will have 150,000 Indian soldiers in Afghanistan. From this development, it can be deduced what their intentions for the region are (Sept 22).
Presence of various forces in Afghanistan, apparently to deter Al Qaeda and Taliban, should also be a cause for concern. The US drone attacks inside Pakistani territory are still continuing.
These are not good symptoms, as such violations by US-led forces might one day drag Pakistani armed forces to retaliate and make the US to justify a full-fledged attack and to blame Pakistan for not cooperating with them as one of their allies in war aganist terror.
Such a situation, however, needs to be analysed whether Pakistan is slowly coming under siege?
SQN LDR (r) S. AUSAF HUSAIN
Karachi
THIS is apropos of the letter, ‘Reopening of the Marriott Hotel’, by Ejaz Ahed , President, Institute of Architects Pakistan (Sept 30).
While some of his suggestions regarding the need for strengthening of the civic agency’s disaster (not merely fire) relief services are laudable, the bulk of the contents is just presumptuous.
Rather than appreciating the extraordinary strength of character and sense of patriotism of the owner of the Islamabad Marriott Hotel, Sadruddin Hashwani, in the face of the grave tragedy, the writer is trying to interpret it as an attempt to rehabilitate the hotel without going through the due process of thorough structural integrity checks on the hotel building.
It is also incorrect to suggest any inadequacy of fire safety or evacuation systems and drills. On the contrary, had this been true, the death toll of guests would have been in the hundreds.
The stress is on saving human lives which are invaluable and not on lamenting the loss of property.
JAMIL KHAWAR
Media adviser, Hashoo Group
Islamabad
IT is apropos of letters by Naeem Baloch and Riaz Kamal on Sept 13 and Sept 17, respectively. An impression is being created by certain elements that somehow the Army or the Military Intelligence has some role in the arrest of assistant lecturer Hassan Janan Badini, along with Abdul Ghafoor Jan Baloch.
This claim is rejected. The individuals mentioned above were caught red-handed by unarmed civilians in a daring action once they threw a hand-grenade at the City Police Station, Quetta, on Aug 25.
They were subsequently handed over to the police by civilians where a case, No.182/2008, has been registered in the City Police Station, Quetta.
SPOKESMAN
Inter-Services Public Relations office, Quetta
ACCORDING to a section of the press, the National Academy of Performing Arts has been doing a yeoman’s service for the lovers of art and culture in Karachi for some time in the past.
During the past one year it has successfully arranged to stage four dramas and another is also on the cards to go on the stage next month.
According to reports, just like its other plays, Vakil Sahib, the latest production of NAPA, was also very well received by a good number of audience throughout the nights it was staged at the Karachi Arts Council, besides drawing ravishing reviews by different newspapers and periodicals of the national press. So far so good. But the question arises that why National Academy of Performing Arts has restricted itself to the city of Karachi alone.
Why does it not move on to other cities like Lahore and Islamabad where also the stage drama is passionately followed and avidly watched by the enthusiasts of art and drama?
Apart from the fact that the people of these two cities do have a good literary taste to appreciate a good work of fine arts, there are adequate arrangements too for stage performances in the cities of Lahore and Islamabad.
However, if on the one hand Lahore keeps on buzzing around with the theatrical life all around the year; Islamabad also deserves a good decent play to watch at least once in a while, on the other.
So the National Academy of Performing Arts is requested that it must not deprive Islamabad of some nice entertainment and it must arrange to hold its stage plays in the fun-starved capital of Pakistan from time to time.
RAFAT MAHMOOD ANSARI
Islamabad
WE, the students, are literally annoyed and disturbed by the recurrent loadshedding problem.
On Oct 19 we faced several hours of loadshedding from 7am to 3pm.
It is impossible to study under such circumstances as students heavily rely on computers for their studies.
I seriously suggest that our leaders experience the pain to sympathise with us.
I wonder if loadshedding is ever an issue at the President’s House.
It is requested that the government should abstain from carrying out unannounced loadshedding as this is causing us a great loss at studies.
PERVISHA KHAN
Lahore
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