| November 10, 2008 | Monday | Ziqa'ad 11, 1429 |
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Russia and Muslims
Suggestions for president
American officials’ stance
Aafia in US custody
PIA explains Haj fare calculations
Winterised tents
Saving the environment
Sniffer dogs
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
AT its national conference held in Karachi on Nov 5, the Workers-Employers Bilateral Council of Pakistan (Webcop) has rejected the Industrial Relations Act, 2008 (IRA) Bill passed by the Senate (Nov 6). It is now pending with the National Assembly for debate and approval.
Earlier when some members of Webcop had approached the federal labour minister expressing their concern about passing of the Bill by the Senate in haste, they were told that let it be made into an Act and subsequently amendments could be carried out after holding a tripartite conference with representatives of workers, employers and the government. This logic has not been understood by members of Webcop, who are the major stakeholders in this matter, as to why should their recommendations be overlooked in the first instance.
In a resolution passed after the day-long discussions, Webcop has requested the government to refer the Bill to the Select Committee of the National Assembly for incorporating its recommendation which primarily proposed amendments to the controversial Industrial Relations Ordinance (IRO) of 2002.
Being a participant of Webcop’s conference, I am of the view that besides others the following critical changes should definitely be brought into the IRA Bill:
(a) Section 24 (11): The term of Collective Bargaining Agent (CBA) union extended from 2 to 3 years in the IRO 2002 has again been reduced to 2 years. At a tripartite labour conference held in 2001, it was unanimously agreed that the CBA’s term should be 3 years, which should remain as such.
(b) The redundant forums of Management Committee (Section 34) and Joint Management Board (Section 35), which are neither acceptable to workers nor to employers, have been revived thru the Bill. These were rightly omitted from the IRO 2002. In its recommendations, Webcop has proposed only one forum, namely ‘Joint Management Council’, to substitute these two forums as well as that of the Works Council.
(c) Section 57: Even in the IRO of 1969, it was mentioned that a settlement shall be binding for such period as is agreed upon by parties. Based upon this law most of the establishments have been reaching settlements for a period of 2 years but in some companies its duration has been 3 years and the system is being practised for many decades.
In the IRA Bill the maximum period of a settlement has been restricted to 2 years which is neither acceptable to workers nor to employers.
(d) A most progressive clause on the ‘Observance of workers and employers reciprocal rights and obligations’ contained in Section 83 of the IRO 2002 has been unjustifiably omitted from the IRA Bill. Webcop desires that this clause should remain in the Act.
The government should not act in an undue hurry in promulgating the IRA 2008. It should be remembered that the need to have a new industrial relations law had arisen due to the strong protests lodged by various labour federations against some of the clauses of IRO 2002.
These federations did not want a total repeal of IRO 2002 but had proposed amendments to this Ordinance thru the forum of Webcop. It will, therefore, be unfortunate to ignore the viewpoint of a stakeholder due to which this whole initiative has been taken by the present government which should not let it backfire.
PARVEZ RAHIM
Karachi
WHILE referring to my letter, “America’s blind spot”, Jawad Ahmed has made some assertions in his note, ‘Russia and Muslims’ (Nov 1), a few of which are taken up here.
First, that it is politically incorrect to talk collectively about a ‘western society’ since there is no such thing. Second, Russia is not a part of the West and its policies, values and beliefs have been different. Third, Russia has fought two world wars against its ‘western European’ neighbour Germany.
Fourth, Russia has helped several Arab countries against the western-backed Israel; it has never branded Muslims as terrorists and the armies of Russia have guarded regions like Chechnya against foreign invasion by spilling their own blood. The implication is that Moscow is not hurtful to the Muslims.
While I agree that there are some differences between the Russians and the other western countries and it cannot be neatly bracketed with them, their common features, including religion, put them more in the same class. The white Slavic Russians call the people hailing from the Caucasian territories like Chechnya and Dagestan as ‘black’ or dark, although they are so fair-skinned, which implicitly lumps the majority race with the West.
The media and the people in the West themselves keep talking of ‘western society’. What else would you call the combination of the US and western Europe? After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia soon joined Nato and started identifying themselves with their western neighbours. Even the former Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe are aligning with that bloc.
Russia may have fought Germany in the two wars, but so did western countries like France and Britain. This fact doesn’t make the former an eastern nation. Regarding Russia’s attitude towards the Muslims, it has spilled more Muslim blood than any other country, mainly during Stalin’s time, which runs into millions.
These had been its citizens who were slain or otherwise sent to the Siberian concentration camps and Islam was nearly obliterated. The loss of Afghan lives due to the USSR’s invasion also runs into millions. If, after annexing Chechnya forcibly a couple of centuries back, its soldiers spill their own blood to continue that occupation, it isn’t doing the Chechens any favour, who wish to be free.
Let’s also recall that Moscow had aided Serbia when the Serbs resorted to the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. During the war in Kosovo, thousands of Russian civilians and many retired generals, had voluntarily gone to Serbia to fight against the Kosovar guerillas who were being supported by western forces.
Closer home, the Russians had allied with and massively helped India militarily and diplomatically to break up Pakistan in 1971. Also, after 9/11, Moscow switched sides and colluded with the US in the latter’s ouster of the Taliban and the occupation of Afghanistan, meanwhile having kept its influence in that country through the notorious Northern Alliance. Ironically, the same US-led coalition is now trying to hold talks with the Taliban to find a political solution before pulling out of the country, while being at loggerheads with Russia over Georgia.
M.P. CHISHTI
Karachi
TO improve the quality of life of the people, I have the following suggestions for the president of Pakistan:
— Implement the 1977 Land Reform Act. This Act was not implemented by dictator Ziaul Haq, after taking a fatwa against it. There can be no better tribute to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto than this. With its implementation, you will prove to be the worthy successor of ZAB.
— Go ahead and repeal all laws including, Hudood ordinance, which has curtailed the personal rights of Pakistanis and created tension in society.
— Make peace with India, with some adjustment in Kashmir borders, to concentrate energy on poverty alleviation and developing our part of Kashmir.
— Adopt a zero inflation policy to protect the poor.
— Reduce indirect taxes radically and increase direct taxes substantially to reduce poverty.
— Create two free economic zones in each province. Such zones should have their own simplified laws and provide one-window service to investors. Like in China these zones will become powerful economic engines of the country and absorb surplus labour and alleviate poverty.
— Create one additional province in each existing province and also relocate the federal capital to a more central location. The new provincial capitals should also be in central locations. — Restore five per cent right for locals in the natural resource taken out from their area, as was granted by the Act of 1935. Such right is still available in India and Bangladesh. The denial of this right after discovery of Sui gas is the root-cause of the Balochistan problem.
—Absorb all Fata and Pata into Pakistan by adopting the Balochistan model. Also work on bringing all Baloch and Pakhtun areas of Afghanistan and Iran into Pakistan.
— Move all defence establishments away from cities and locate them in remote areas as per international practice. Auction all defence land in cities. The proceeds should make armed forces self-financing. These measures will enhance the respect of the army and end the sometime insulting debate in the parliament and the press about their budget.
— Create a federal mortgage agency, with special eviction powers, to refinance property development.
— Start a mandatory savings scheme for overseas Pakistanis. Linked with passport renewal, such a scheme can generate some $4 billion annually and provide support to Pakistan. It can also secure the future of overseas Pakistanis, who otherwise end up spending all their savings on consumption items.
— Simplify business laws to eliminate corruption. British laws were meant for a captive market and are not suitable for current needs. Laws of Japan, Germany as well as those of Hong Kong and Singapore, may be used as a base for new laws.
— Look the other way and let the cheap Iranian oil flow into the country unhindered, to save foreign exchange and reduce inflation.
The details of the above suggestions are available on www.tariquekj.com.
TARIQUE KHAN JAVED
President, Overseas Pakistani Investors Forum,
Karachi
US homeland security chief Michael Chertoff and the defence secretary have made a few assertions regarding international law and the rights of a country (read: America) to attack others pre-emptively (Nov 1).
Mr Chertoff said international law should accommodate a country’s need to deter a possible threat abroad even if it meant taking pre-emptive action. Meanwhile, Robert Gates had warned that Washington would hold countries fully accountable for their actions.
This raises some questions. Many years back the US had accused that a factory in Khartoum, Sudan, was making some chemicals that are used in producing chemical weapons of mass destruction. Its aircraft had them attacked and destroyed the plant, but it was soon discovered that the concern was only producing aspirin, rather than the alleged chemicals.
Similarly, before its invasion of Iraq, Washington had created much hype about the country having nuclear and other WMDs, as also of having connections with Al Qaeda.
Subsequent events had proved both these statements were nothing but lies. According to independent western estimates, nearly one million Iraqis have died as a result of the occupation and some four million have become refugees.
The question is, who would hold America responsible for these crimes. The American attitude is clearly that might is right.
The same applies to its treatment of the Muslim prisoners captured in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
Many human rights organisations and even leaders of some countries have called their treatment in Abu Ghraib, Bagram or the ‘rendition’ by the CIA as a gross violation of international law. Who will bring the US to justice?
The Americans should remember the adage, ‘First deserve, then desire.’ They should not expect the world to absolve them of their own sins while they go on attacking others without adequate reasons. They have either fully destroyed or brought to the edge of destruction states like Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Somalia either by their paranoia about Islam, love for Israel and desire for usurping the hydrocarbon resources of the Muslims.
M.Y. KHAN
Karachi
IMRAN Khan and Yvonne Ridley broke the news on July 7 at a press conference at Islamabad that the woman prisoner No. 650 in the notorious US jail of Bagram, Afghanistan, was Dr Aafia Siddiqui. Now the same persons from the same place are stating that prisoner No. 650 was not Dr Siddiqui rather she was some other Muslim woman.
The basis of this drastic change in their stand has been reported by Ms Ridley to be a letter by the American ambassador in the UK to Lord Nazir Ahmad (a Britisher of Pakistani origin) wherein the latter has been informed that the prisoner No. 650 at the Bagram Jail was not Dr Siddiqui rather she was some other Muslim lady who has since been repatriated to her parent country (neither the name of the victimised lady nor that of her country has been given).
While faithfully accepting the assertion of the American ambassador in the UK, both Imran and and Ms Ridley have acted extra-simply and over-innocently.
They even forgot the recent (of Aug 16) letter of another US ambassador (US ambassador in Islamabad) regarding Aafia Siddiqui and her children, published in all of the main newspapers of Pakistan, which was full of untruths and which has been criticised by numerous letter-writers in the country and is still being criticised.
The US ambassador in the UK has simply tried, through his ‘honest’ statement to Lord Nazir Ahmad, to mislead the people and to deprive Aafia Siddiqui of the sympathies of the masses the world over, and the oversimple Imran Khan and Ms Ridley have fallen prey to his trap.
The fact is that the so-called woman prisoner No. 650 was Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her late-night screams belonged, most probably, to that period when she was undergoing forced plastic surgery of her face by the American.
During her recent meeting with a group of senators of Pakistan, who were specially deputed by the government of Pakistan to see her, Dr Siddiqui categorically stated that she, along with her three children, was kidnapped in Karachi by a foreign agency, transported to Afghanistan and kept and tortured physically and mentally at the Bagram Jail of the US (according to a report published in a section of the press on Oct 15).
M. A. FARIDI
Islamabad
THIS is apropos of Syed Javaid Hasan’s letter, ‘Unfair Haj fares’ (Oct 24). While we appreciate the writer’s concern, it seems that the analogies he has drawn are not in correct perspective.
First, it has to be appreciated that Haj fares are not at all comparable to fares on scheduled flights. Haj flights are permitted to operate with one-way load only, as per Saudi regulatory requirements.
Therefore, the economics of Haj flights have to be viewed in the perspective that to carry the same number of pilgrims, the airline has to operate twice the number of flights, i.e. one way flight carrying outbound Hajis and coming back empty. And then after completion of Haj, one-way flights going outbound empty and carrying in-bound Hajis on the way back.
The economics of Haj fare is based on the operating costs thus incurred twice.
It is also worthwhile to note that all costs primarily are incurred in foreign currency whether it is the aircraft operating cost or the airport handling costs at Jeddah and Madinah.
In such a scenario, the steep deprecation of rupee simply cannot be ignored, particularly when the Haj fare is collected in rupees, while the costs incurred are in foreign currency, When the Haj fares were fixed this year, the prevalent exchange rate was around Rs70 to a dollar.
Thus the Haj fare (from south) of Rs70,000 was supposed to yield $1,000, which with depreciation has now gone down to $853, yet all costs to the airline have gone up in terms of operating and handling charges payable in foreign currency.
The example quoted in the said letter about the fares for private Haj being increased after Nov 23 again should not be viewed in isolation. Because of excessive pressure for seats for the short duration private Haj demand, particularly from Nov 23 onwards, for PIA the deployment of capacity was only possible by adjusting its forthcoming winter schedule. Yet to ensure that our clientele is not deprived of any opportunity in performing the holy pilgrimage, the airline had to readjust many a flight from its high-yield hard currency routes, just to quote a few:
a. Downgradation of bigger aircraft from the UK to be able to deploy these on Jeddah route,
b. Suspension of third weekly flight from New York,
c. Postponement of intended Barcelona operation,
d. Postponement of additional Leeds and Kuala Lumpur flights, and so on.
All these are hard currency-earning routes, generating revenue which is badly needed by the airline at this juncture to maintain a healthy rupee versus hard currency earnings ratio.
Nevertheless, PIA has redeployed all this capacity for the convenience of providing adequate capacity for private Haj pilgrims.
While Haj indeed is a sacred duty to be performed by every Muslim, yet the airline does incur extra costs to be able to operate around 306 extra flights and provide capacity for carrying more than 135,000 Hajis, for which it does not get any subsidy from the government.
We hope that the above clarifies the concerns shown in the letter.
TALAT WASEEM
General Manager
Public Affairs, PIA
Karachi
TWO reports in Dawn of Nov 3 reveal that the quake-affected people of Balochistan are complaining that the tents they have been provided are not at all adequate for the subzero temperatures prevalent in the area at night. Another report on the BBC had said that the blankets given to them are no thicker than a chaddar.
The chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Lt-Gen Farooq Ahmad Khan, too, has conceded that so far no winterised tents had been sent to the affected areas.
It may be recalled that after the October 2005 earthquake in the NWFP and Azad Kashmir, the same problem had been faced because those areas are perhaps even colder than the parts hit by the recent tremors. My impression of Gen Farooq Khan, who had been put in charge of the relief activities soon after the 2005 calamity, is that he has worked honestly all along.
However, one must also point out an apparent lapse on his or the government’s part. It is well-known that some areas of Pakistan are prone to high seismic activity, particularly the mountainous regions up north and in Balochistan. These obviously have an exceedingly cold climate. So, why weren’t preparations made in advance to procure winterised tents in sufficient quantities? I believe billions of dollars’ worth of aid was provided in 2005 by many countries, therefore money should not have been a problem.
Would Gen Khan or any other official please respond to this complaint? He has said that some friendly countries have been approached to send the required tents to us. But, lives are being lost, particularly of children, who are contracting pneumonia and other diseases due to the biting cold. A little planning in the last three years could have saved them and also prevented unnecessary suffering for all the victims of the quake.
Another thing that has not been done after 2005 but must be done now is to design low-cost pre-fabricated, earthquake-resistant houses, such as are now being secured from Turkey, to enable the future victims of natural disasters to get a shelter as soon as possible, after losing their own homes.
IBNE RAHIM
Karachi
WITH all this talk about Greenpeace coming up with a plan to allegedly bail ‘us all’ out of the previous sinking financial world order, one comes to think about the use to Pakistan of all this. No wait… should the plan ‘affect’ Pakistan as a residual international effect on domestic workings, or rather should we take steps to be a part of it?
Pakistan is part and parcel of the largest brain drain in engineers to the US, the UK and the Middle East. The quality of universities such as Punjab University, GIK, FAST and LUMS provide the brightest individuals.
An example can be seen in the recent discovery made by a Punjab University student pertaining to an environment-friendly pesticide. However, inventors in the form of life-sized examples exist who haven’t had much professional education but have been interested in the field.
Well, then why not put them all to work in the quest of finding new environment-friendly alternatives for the harmful carbon-emitting present world. Isn’t it about time to ‘seize the day’ rather than use the same attitude of waiting for technological recipes from abroad as was prevalent and ‘stuck on’ since the colonial era? This is our chance to move on from a hegemonic world as it seeks refuge now from the Eastern economies.
Greenpeace seeks to provide the solution in the form of increased investing in green activities, in order to make a new market for such activities. One thing can be said that, sooner rather than later, a parallel trend of environmentally friendly activities will be of much demand considering the increase in adverse environmental effects seen every passing year.
HANIYA SHEIKH
Lahore
WITH suicide bombings on the rise in Pakistan, I wonder why security agencies do not use sniffer dogs on a large scale.
They are probably the most effective tool for pre-empting suicide bombings, and the Pakistan Army has dog training facilities with expert trainers.
If the strategy sounds feasible and effective to security experts, I would like to suggest that the Pakistan Army should expand such facilities on a war footing and train dogs for the special purpose of detecting explosives and raising an alarm if it detects explosives or an approaching bomber within a certain radius (to whatever is the range of its sniffing powers).
Such dogs could be supplied to police stations, sensitive locations like the city government head offices, airports, expo centres and mosques.
And maybe an option for commercial entities like hotels, foreign embassies, stock exchanges, hospitals, and shopping plazas should be kept to buy them from the Army at nominal rates.
SYED HAMZA ALI
Karachi
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