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| January 10, 2009 | Saturday | Muharram 12, 1430 |
Kasab and Durrani
Yet another inferno
OTHER VOICES - Sri Lankan Press
Citizens, Sepa and sewage
Recycling chain collapses
“KARACHI’s sewage disposal problem is a reality which cuts across sectors, affecting the whole city’s health, environmental quality and development,” — Arif Hasan
THE scrap trader was immovable, despite Wu Wenxiu’s pleas. She would pay one yuan — roughly 10 GB pence — for a kilogram of plastic. Around the corner in Shi Yuhai’s yard, the offer was no better. Wu shrugged his shoulders and began to heave bags from his tricycle on to the scales. “One kuai [yuan] here, one kuai there — everywhere’s the same these days. This industry has broken down,” he grumbled.
THE Security Council has finally acted — and that hardly deserves three cheers. With the US, that under the circumstances deserves to be called Israel’s patron saint, abstaining, the world body’s executive arm passed on Thursday a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. This came 13 days after Israel launched its blitz. By the time the vote was taken, the number of dead, mostly Palestinian civilians, had climbed to 800, with over 3,000 wounded. Calling for a “full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza”, the resolution took note of the humanitarian disaster in the Strip and called for the opening of all border crossings. At the time of writing, neither Hamas nor Tel Aviv had accepted it. The US helped draft the resolution, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained why her country had abstained, saying it was waiting to see the outcome of Egyptian mediation. The diplomats at the UN council were disappointed because the American abstention meant less pressure on Israel to heed the call. It is interesting to note that Rice talked to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert four to five times, and diplomatic circles say President Bush changed his mind at the last minute and decided to abstain.
The Security Council’s procrastination in passing a resolution has enabled Israel to continue killing a large number of civilians. On Friday, Israel attacked 30 targets in Gaza, and flattened a five-storey building, killing seven people, including an infant. Earlier, once again with a view to hitting a large group of Palestinian civilians, Israel shelled a UN school where refugees had sheltered, slaughtering 42 civilians, and on Thursday it fired on people fleeing their homes, leaving 24 dead. The Red Cross has also complained that Israel has been firing at ambulances and aid workers. This is in keeping with the Israeli government’s lust for Palestinian blood — Deir Yassin, Jenin and, in Lebanon, Sabra-Chatila, Qana I and Qana II.
Rice now wants the Palestinian Authority to govern the Gaza Strip. This view is open to debate since the Hamas dispensation was voted to power in both Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Ismail Haniye as prime minister, even though he enjoyed the assembly’s majority, and nominated Salam Fayyad, an independent, in his place. By a decree, Abbas did away with the need for the prime minister to obtain a vote of confidence from the House. A ceasefire is only a step towards halting the present slaughter. A durable peace in the land will be possible only when Israel accepts UN resolutions 242 and 338 and follows up on the Oslo process. Without the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state, the region will continue to see bloodshed and turmoil.
MAKING a mountain out of every molehill appears to be the federal government’s speciality. The confirmation that Ajmal Kasab is Pakistani should not have created a controversy; Kasab’s nationality was an open secret and as early as Dec 12 this paper published a detailed account of a meeting with an elderly man in Faridkot who claimed to be Kasab’s father. But the bungled announcement, subsequent denials and then confirmations, and the sacking of National Security Adviser Mehmud Durrani shone a spotlight on the disarray at the apex of decision-making. What can be gleaned from the news thus far is this: the intelligence agencies confirmed to the government that Kasab is a Pakistani; the decision about when and how to announce Kasab’s nationality was left to the government; and the government was preparing to make an announcement when Dawn News broke the story of official confirmation of Kasab’s nationality. What happened next is a classic tale of bumbling officialdom, culminating in Prime Minister Gilani summarily firing Gen (retd) Durrani.
The incident has raised fresh questions about the government’s ability to keep its top officials on the same page at the same time. Once Kasab’s nationality had been determined, why did the government not chalk out a clear plan for making an announcement and share it with every official likely to face questions from the media? And once Mehmud Durrani pre-empted the government and shared the information on Kasab with the media, what was to be gained by dismissing him on the spot? In principle, the prime minister has every right to dismiss anyone in his government who has lost his confidence. But it is odd to fire the national security adviser for causing ‘embarrassment’ to the PM by stating the truth. In doing so, Mr Gilani has sent an unfortunate signal that the messenger is more important than the message. Surely the focus should have been on demonstrating Pakistan’s seriousness to the outside world in investigating local links to the Mumbai attacks. Instead, the big story became petty score-settling at the expense of the national interest. The sensible thing to have done was to quickly arrange a press conference on the Kasab information and punish the national security adviser for his indiscretion at a later date. Unfortunately, the failure of good sense has led to the inevitable: frenzied speculation about rifts between the president and the PM and between the security establishment and the government.
THE new year in Karachi has begun on a tragic note as approximately 40 people — a large number of them children — have died in a blaze that ripped through a North Karachi slum in the wee hours of Friday morning. More than 25 have been injured and dozens of hutments, home to over 200 people, were engulfed by the raging flames. The death toll could rise as hospital sources claim that more than half of the wounded are critical. As scores writhe in pain and grief, the provincial health minister has served up a familiar excuse — he believes that the fire was sparked by a power wire that fell on the huts. Regardless of the fact that more than half of the metropolis’s population lives in slums, government officials are surprisingly unmindful of the planning hazards that surround such shanty towns. This particular settlement, for example, is enclosed by three larger buildings; therefore, police officials believe that the number of casualties mounted because the sole escape route was blocked by the inferno.
The past is, regrettably, always another country as once again relevant departments seem to have paid negligible heed to the dismal figures of frequent fires in 2008 when over 200 major and minor incidents were reported. Meanwhile, what is even more lamentable is the fact that unless an incident involves a high-profile life or area, investigations throw up very little by way of identifying the triggers and then providing adequate compensation to both survivors and bereaved families. Perhaps, this catastrophe can become the catalyst for the elected dispensation to activate health and safety bodies to implement stringent measures that prevent fires, supervise relevant inquiries and make town planners and nazims accountable for such large-scale destruction. Last but not least, it is imperative that such a body oversee emergency services such as fire brigades, bomb disposal squads and ambulances as their abysmal performance and lack of expertise often turns a minor incident into a widespread calamity. Unless a definite accountability mechanism is put in place, Karachi will remain besieged by tragedies that can be prevented.
Dissent is an act of faith
Daily Mirror
THE elements that raised their weapons [at] Lasantha Wickrematunge last morning, belie all interpretations of democracy that we as a society believed in.
The bullets that were fired on him not only deny us the faith we had [in] democracy in general and personal freedoms in particular, but also play with our ability to relate to simple truths we held as sacred.
For a country that has gone through the worst in human history, yesterday’s brutal attack is ... a sad reflection of our society’s inability to tolerate political dissent. Lasantha’s journalism was such that he made many enemies from all divides of society.
He knew the danger to his life in his attempt to uphold truth and justice but was determined to carry out what he believed was his duty towards both journalism and the country. He believed in the strength of an aware society to fight social injustice and dedicated his life to such. He just didn’t bargain for the weaknesses of that same society....
No country that lays siege to its media can hope to progress or ever hold its head high in dignity. Coming barely days following the attack on an electronic media institution, Lasantha’s killing poses a serious threat to society as a whole, and raises ... question[s] [about] how secure it is for any of us anymore.
His killing must deserve our condemnation not merely because it denied a journalist his right to an opinion, but more because it denied the people their right to know. These are not the workings of a society even close to democracy, leave alone [on the] path to progress.
It is an undeniable truth that Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous locations for journalists to operate in. The level of killings, abductions, threats and intimidations to journalists is a sad manifestation of how intolerable we have become, as a society, to opposing views. The long-term consequences of such intolerance cannot be condoned by any right thinking people, because therein lies the degradation of society as a whole, and the threat to every citizen.
No amount of condemnation, official or otherwise, can compensate for the inhumanity that made this killing possible. And it is not only the cruelty of the killing and the inhumanity of the process that led to the death that we must condemn. It is the very elements of a social system that allows for such deaths to take place and also provides refuge to the culprits of such heinous crimes that we must find a means to end.
The government must be mindful of the danger that such insecure societies provide to its own profile in the international arena. Unless and until the government launches an investigation and provides answers to the questions raised, its own ability to govern would be left open to debate. Such a scenario is ... undesirable....
If dissent, as they say, is an act of faith in a democracy then it failed both Lasantha the journalist and us as a people, miserably yesterday. The cowardly act lay bare the fragility of the democracy we believed we could find refuge in and the vulnerability of anyone attempting change.
Ironically, nothing will contribute to the threat to all our freedoms more than our apathy towards such a system and provide strength for it to prevail. Every society that watches in mere disdain and the political or social entities that refuse to remedy this great injustice to humanity take upon themselves the responsibility of removing the very faith ... place[d] on truth and justice; both elements that Lasantha Wickrematunge attempted very hard to uphold and paid a heavy price for… — (Jan 9)
Imagine for a moment that each time you pull the lever of your toilet flush, the contents flow down and spread around the periphery of your house.
In a few months, you are likely to end up with a large, nauseating sewage pond that is home to germs and deadly disease. How many of us are aware that we are, perhaps inadvertently, guilty of such misconduct? Each time we use the flush, and the untreated sewage waste makes its way to the Indian Ocean, we become party to the crime of creating a sprawling gutter around our city.
Karachi dumps over 370 million gallons of raw untreated sewage daily into the sea, turning its coasts into cesspools of rancid water and latent pandemics. Laden with E.coli and harmful chemicals, the toxic waste is destroying coastal and marine habitats. It also causes skin ailments, gastroenteritis and urinary tract infections to the general public especially those living near the seaside, besides posing a serious threat to the livelihood of fisherfolk and to tourism.
Connecting people’s homes to clean piped water and to sewers for environment-friendly waste disposal — often referred to as ‘the sanitary revolution’ — is seen as the most important medical milestone since 1840. Many considered it to be more significant than the invention of antibiotics, vaccinations or the discovery of the structure of DNA. However, after over 60 long years, we have neither clean water in our pipes nor a safe disposal mechanism for our sewage. How far are we from achieving the ‘sanitary revolution’ and what are we doing to make it happen?
The three available sewage treatment plants — STP, 1, 2 and 3 — intended to treat Karachi’s 430 million gallons of sewage, have the limited capacity to treat just about 150 million gallons per day. With STP 2 no longer working and STPs 1 and 3 handling only 60 MGD, we are left with over 370 million gallons of homegrown, untreated waste that makes its way into the Indian Ocean every day. A new treatment plant, STP 4, has been under discussion and in the pipeline for many years.
However, there is a bright chance that, like thousands of our ghost schools, this project too might become yet another ghost initiative and fail to see the light of the day. The reason is simple: 365 acres of the 465 acres of land allocated for this project have already been granted to private parties and that too on a 30-year lease, leaving about 100 acres, which is not adequate for a new treatment plant.Thus, a crucial need of the city and its first step in the journey to a ‘sanitary revolution’ may have been pushed back by another 30 years. Clearly, the government’s mafia-like desire to acquire and distribute land far exceeds its concerns for the fundamental development needs of the city.
Needless to say, the Sindh government is blessed with an agency called the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) and a provincial minister for environment. The agency has been established to ensure protection of the environment and to take action against those who violate prescribed environmental rules and standards.
Meanwhile, the treatment of the city sewage is the responsibility of the city government. To dump it in the ocean is unlawful and a violation of the government’s national environmental quality standards (NEQS). It is therefore mandatory that Sepa not remain silent and use its authority to put an end to the crime of 370 million gallons of daily environmental pollution.
If Sepa is perceived as exercising firm authority over state-sponsored pollution, it stands a far stronger chance to control hundreds of lethal, pollutant-producing industries that do not meet the NEQS. Therefore, the time to think more seriously about the final destination of our flushed contents is, undoubtedly now.
naeemsadiq@gmail.com
Wu is one of 160,000 collectors in Beijing who make a living from the detritus of urban life — plastic sheeting, office printouts, bottles, radiators and scraps of cardboard. Recycling has become a global industry and China is the largest importer of the world’s waste materials. Then came the slump.
“It’s a canary in the coalmine: it’s the front and back end of industry,” said Adam Minter, who runs the Shanghai Scrap blog and specialises in the metal trade. “Until about eight weeks ago, for example, the entire [US] west coast paper market was sent to China and most of it was sent south. It was processed and made into packaging for products that then shipped back to the US ... But when US consumer demand dropped off, that broke the cycle.”
Across the scrap trade, prices have halved or worse in a matter of months. Each link in the chain is disintegrating, from factories to scrapyards to collectors such as Wu, 56, a former farmer who now plans to return to Hubei province.
Official media reported that four-fifths of China’s recycling units had closed and that millions will eventually be left without employment.
Dongxiaokou, on the outskirts of Beijing, is a village composed of scrap: blocks of crushed metal are stacked in a tower, heaps of plastic bottles glint in the sunshine and piles of newspapers and rags fill yards. But the merchants all have the same story — they have lost tens of thousands of pounds in a few months, wiping out years of hard work.
Shi puffed on a cigarette as he counted out notes for Wu. “I’ve been in this business for 15 years and it’s been bad before, but never this severe. Everyone’s lost a huge amount of money and some can’t sell their stock,” he said. “Usually we sell to factories and they recycle them into plastic chips. But the price of chips has dropped so it’s had a knock-on effect on us.”
This area deals in domestic waste rather than imports, but Shi said every part of the industry had been affected.
Beijing dealers have taken a particularly hard hit. They stockpiled large quantities of recyclables because prices were soaring, but as the market began to soften, the Olympic security clampdown prevented trucks from entering the capital. The merchants could only watch as the value of their holdings plummeted.
“In a good year we can earn about 50,000 yuan but this year we lost 200,000,” said Gong Rongchuan, 45, whose yard lies across the rutted alley from Shi’s. “We came here more than 10 years ago and at the beginning we collected ourselves. Then we managed to start the business. We were too poor to get loans but we managed to borrow 100,000-200,000 from friends and relatives and we work from morning to night every day. But we haven’t paid them all back because of our losses.”
Minter says the predicament is typical. “People would borrow money from relatives and buy a container of scrap and then throw all that money back in and reinvest it. Great if it goes up — but the moment it starts slipping, especially if it’s slipping 20-30 per cent, you’re finished,” he said.
Gong said: “Once we have sold all this stock we’ll leave. My son’s sorting it because we can’t afford workers any more. We haven’t figured out what to do next. We have seven people in the family and only 2.5-3 mu [roughly 0.2 hectares] of farmland. It’s too many people and too little land, so even if we go home there’s not much we can do. We have both old and young to support.”
Like 80 per cent of the merchants in this area, she comes from a single county, Gushi, in impoverished Henan province. “One of the officials came up here and cried when he saw how bad business was,” said another trader from Gushi.
The effects can be felt across China. Most of Gong’s customers were plastics recyclers in Wen’an, Hebei, where by one estimate 93 per cent of income depends on the trade. Some are already bankrupt. Wen’an Dongdu Jiacheng Recycling Resources is clinging on.
But Miss Han, a materials buyer, said all but three of the 26 production line workers had been sent home for the new year holiday more than a month early. There is no longer demand for plastic granules from nearby companies such as Hongkai Plastic Products, which made items such as bicycle handlebars. Its owner, Mr Zheng, has sent 20 workers home. “My factory was hit by the economic crisis — it’s been closed for two months already,” he said. “We usually sell our products to a dealer and most of his business is exports. He didn’t give us any more orders.”
At a factory down the road, the response to queries was more brusque. “We’ve already gone bust,” said a man, and hung up.
— The Guardian, London
