THE story I relate is attributed to Lee Kuan Yew (father of Captain Lee Hsien Loong) of Singapore. On Mr Lee’s last visit to this country of ours, as he was leaving a journalist asked if he had a message for the people of Pakistan. “There is nothing I can say to them,” he responded. “Most of them seem to be worried about life after death.”

The democratically elected leader of the opposition sitting in the National Assembly, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, on August 2, was ‘deported’ (as it was politely put) from the UAE. Religion is not the business of that progressive enlightened state and the Gulf Arabs do not want trouble-making rabble-rousers in their midst. He landed and was swiftly put on the next plane home. The government of the UAE made a statement without uttering a single word. A couple of months ago, another maulana, Samiul Haq of Haqqania Madressah fame, was not even allowed to enter Belgium.

Soon after 7/7, Senator Professor Doctor Khurshid Ahmed ‘rushed’ to the United Kingdom. Unconfirmed reports have it that Loughborough University, which in 2003 had conferred on him an honorary doctorate of literature now wish to strip him of that honour.

Our maulanas are lucky; they are free to roam around their own country and any other country which will accept them. They do not suffer the jails of Pakistan; they are allowed to keep well away from them.

To take just the province of Sindh alone, we have 15 jails to accommodate male prisoners. Listed here are the prisons with the built capacity and the actual number of prisoners as of April this year : Central Prison, Karachi, capacity 1,691, actual inmates 5,542 ; District Jail, Malir, capacity 893, actual inmates 2,864 ; Youthful Offenders Industrial School, Karachi, capacity 350, inmates 517; Central Prison, Hyderabad, capacity 1,527, inmates 2,825; Special Prison, Nara, Hyderabad, capacity 300, inmates 716; District Jail, Dadu, capacity 250, inmates 445; District Jail, Badin, capacity 250, inmates 194; District Jail, Nawabshah, capacity 79, holding 250; District Jail, Sanghar, capacity 250, holding 590; District Jail, Mirpurkhas, capacity 75, holding 240; Central Prison, Larkana, capacity 410, holding 1,254; Central Jail, Khairpur, capacity 526, actual inmates 870; Central Prison-I, Sukkur, capacity 1,498, holding 2,372; Central Prison-II, Sukkur, capacity 550, inmates 501; District Jail, Jacobabad, capacity 250, holding 437.

Apart from District Jail, Badin and Central Prison-II, Sukkur, the other 13 jails are, to put it mildly, grossly overcrowded.

Moving on to women prisoners, also this April, we have four prisons in Sindh to house these unfortunates : Special Prison for Women, Karachi, capacity 150, actual inmates 233; Special Prison for Women, Hyderabad, capacity 150, holding 69; Special Prison for Women, Larkana, capacity 110, holding 21; Women Ward, Central Prison-II, Sukkur, capacity 25, holding 16. So, apart from Karachi, the rest are felicitously under-populated.

In Central Prison, Karachi, as of June this year, 113 male prisoners were from Nigeria alone, from West Africa there were four, from Tanzania, Ghana and Iran there three from each; from South Africa, Mali and Nepal two from each; from Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Guinea, Switzerland and Cameroon one from each; making a grand total of 137 foreign men, all on drug-related charges..

In Karachi’s Special Prison for Women, this June there were 33 from Nigeria, six from Tanzania, four from Thailand, from Guinea and South Africa three from each; from Uganda, Ghana, Philippines, Cameroon, Liberia and Bangladesh two from each, from Mali, Ivory Coast, Netherlands and Kenya one from each — making a total of 65 foreign women, all convicted for drug smuggling or dealing.

So, at the end of June we had here in Karachi 146 Nigerian inmates of our jails, all convicted on drug charges. This is an obvious indication that there is something seriously wrong with the visa section of our embassy in Lagos, and it is high time our overburdened laid-back foreign office officials awoke to this fact. It is rumoured that visas in Lagos can be obtained by merely sitting at home and paying out a sum of Rs.15,000 to whoever — a mixed mafia of officials of our embassy, of the host country, and of the local drug barons.

Visas are issued blindly, even to pregnant women carriers. Putting these men and women through our courts, then accommodating them, and in certain cases the women’s children, in our jails costs the exchequer — that is the taxpayers, you and I — no mean sum. Does this government of ours have the competence to sack its envoy to Nigeria and clean up the embassy staff? No.

One further question — does this government have the competence and the guts to firmly refuse to sponsor the upcoming junket of former prime minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain of Gujrat who is flying off to Britain to bring back the remains of another Chaudhry, Rehmat Ali, who now lies at peace in the green and pleasant land of Cambridge? Why does he wish to disturb a dead man who cannot protest? Press reports have it that the British government has given permission for the ‘mortal remains’ of Chaudhry Rehmat Ali to be taken to Pakistan. One must suppose that it had no other alternative but to allow this ridiculous exercise.