RAWALPINDI: Appeals for hides have started chasing the devout Muslims of the city, even before they could decide what animal they can afford to sacrifice during the Eidul Azha days.

Posters and banners carrying the appeal from all sorts of organisations went up all over the city on Friday.

And Friday congregations were told at places by prayer leaders that the local mosque has the first right on the hides.

Commissioner Zahid Saeed told Dawn that the provincial government had directed them to stop banned outfits from collecting animal hides during Eidul Azha. “No party, group or organisation can collect animal hides unless it has obtained a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) from the district administration,” he said.

It was not clear if all those after the hides had obtained the NOC.

A senior official of the City District Government Rawalpindi said the local administration had received applications from four or six organisations for establishing hide collection camps but no decision had been taken on them yet.

Superintendent of Police City Karamat Malik said the government had directed them to check the antecedents of the applicant before issuing the certificate. The security branch will have to certify that the organisation was not involved in terrorist activities.

“Welfare organisations will be allowed to collect hides. People will have the choice to give the charity whomever they want to,” he said.

Commissioner Zahid Saeed says no one would be allowed to collect hides without NOC

The NOC is required because the prized hides generate a tough competition, and sometimes violence. Their sale to tanneries brings big money.

Sunni Tehreek spokesman Naeemul Haq, however, told Dawn that there was no need to get permission for a welfare work.

“Police closed the camps of welfare organisations in the past but did not take notice of the banned outfits operating under new names,” he claimed.

Many organisations and political parties have turned the camps they established in the city for collecting donations for flood-affected people into hide collection centres. 

In such a melee for the hides, the local police and administration find themselves unable to check if banned militant outfits were also in the race for the hides. Some such organisations have been working anyway by changing their names. Sipah-i-Sahaba now operates as Millat-i-Islamia and Jaish-i-Mohammad as Alfurqan and Khuddamul Islam.

Mainstream political and religious parties also collect animal hides. Jamaat-i-Islami uses its Al-Khidmat Foundation and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) its Khidmat-i-Khalq Foundation (KKF)for the purpose.

Imran Khan and Dr Tahirul Qadri have, however, been seeking donations and hides for their Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital and the International Minhajul Quran organisation before they launched their respective political parties, PTI and PAT.

The MQM and Shaukat Khanam Hospital have also sent SMS to residents of the twin cities to donate hides to them.

Teams of the religious groups are going door-to-door with the same message.

Akhter Hussain, a resident of Mohanpura, with a sacrificial bull outside his house, received phone calls from many seminaries, welfare organisations and political parties to promise them the hide.

“I wonder how they got my mobile number,” he said.

Published in Dawn, October 4th , 2014