THIS refers to the letter ‘Self-financed senators’ (March 10). I endorse the suggestion that the government should consider setting up a ‘businessmen’s section’ in the Senate with two or three seats from each province solely reserved for the business class.

However, 50 seats the said letter suggested are way too many. We would not like our Senate, which is a key constitutional legislative forum, to suddenly turn into a ‘businessmen’s club’. However, two or three such seats from each province can be ‘auctioned off’ and the proceeds may be spent on development activities like poverty alleviation in the province of the ‘winning’ senator.

Likewise, technocrats, economists, engineers, doctors, chartered accountants, architects, urban planners and overseas Pakistanis can also lobby the government, or the quarters concerned, for a reserved seat or two for each such professional constituency.

The aim should be to foster the influx of educated, multi-skilled and talented people into the Senate, thereby helping to convert the forum into a modern platform for the country’s upward trajectory in the coming decades.

Abbas R. Siddiqi
Lahore

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2021