UMERKOT: The Hindu festival of Maha Shivaratri began here at the Shiv temple on Friday under tight security measures and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) vice chairman Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi kicked off its three-day celebrations.

Around 250 police officials, 50 Pakistan Rangers personnel and 1,000 volunteers have been deployed for the security of the festival.

Six walk-through gates have been installed to avert any untoward incident in view of threats of terrorism in Sindh. Around 100,000 devotees, including women and children, from across the country are expected to attend the three-day events.

When Mr Qureshi reached the temple, he was accorded a warm welcome and presented the traditional turban. He felicitated the Hindu community on their festival. He also gathered details about the issues of the local Hindu community and assured them of his personal role in resolving them.

He told them that he had come here with the message of love, unity, peace and pluralism. He said Islam taught respect for all religions and faiths. He said the minority communities were playing a vital role in the development of Pakistan.

Mr Qureshi said it was due to the recent spate of terrorism that people were facing security issues. However, he assured the minority communities that their security and safety was a sacred task for all countrymen. He said: “We will duly protect our mosques besides the worship places of minorities.”

The PTI leader said he was striving to introduce a trend of change in the backward area of Thar. If they managed to develop the Thar desert, they could easily develop any other region of Pakistan.

He said the funds tagged for the development of Thar went into the pockets of ‘corrupt mafia’. Despite announcements of the installation of hundreds of reverse osmosis (RO) plants and spending billions of rupees, Thari people were still thirsty, he said.

He said there were many RO plants in Thar that did not work. Taxpayers’ money was wasted in the name of the RO plants and quenching the thirst of the poor Thari people, but only ‘corruption mafia’ minted money. He said Thar had huge mineral resources and only the coal of Thar was enough to remove darkness from the whole of Pakistan, but the rulers were not sincere to utilise this ‘black gold’.

He said small dams should be built all over Thar. Reservations of the local population regarding some projects should also be considered and mitigated as the Constitution had given equal rights to all the citizens of Pakistan, he added.

After concluding his six-day tour of Tharparkar, Mr Qureshi on Friday left for Karachi.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2017