SARGODHA, Nov 30: Sultanpur Mela, situated 40km away from here, has been highlighted in the print and electronic media because of its linkage to a network that does business in human organs including kidneys.

The villagers are directly and indirectly involved in agriculture. Mela, Ranjha and Badrana tribes have large land holdings in the area.

The people live as slaves of their feudal lords, which is also a category of bonded labour in the agriculture sector. The wages offered to them do not exceed Rs60 per head per day. A field worker also gets 1,000kg of wheat a year. Workers live at the house of landlords, where they are forced to serve the guests after working in the fields for 12 hours. They are supposed to work round the clock.

It is a tradition amongst the workers’ Muslim Sheikh tribe here that a person must pay at least Rs50,000 to the family of a girl to get her hand in marriage. A worker has to borrow the money from the landlord. The loan usually continues increasing because of the interest on it. The field worker and his family serve as slaves of the landlord till they are able to pay back the loan, which, however, is usually possible only when another landlord arranges payment of the dues. It is just a change of owners for the poor worker.

So many of the Sultanpur inhabitants have sold their kidneys only to clear their debts.

About five years ago, one Allah Yar of Sillanwali escaped from the life of a slave at his landlord’s and went to Rawalpindi seeking a job. He came across a person named Basher Ahmed Lodhi who allegedly persuaded him into selling one of his kidneys for Rs80,000. Mr Yar had relatives in Mateela village, whom he motivated into selling their kidneys to pay off their loans.

The people of Sultanpur Mela who used to work in Rawalpindi helped the agent hunt more and more people of Sultanpur Mela and Sultanpur Mor. Over 300 men and women between the ages of 20 and 45 have sold their kidneys.

Coachman Munir told Dawn that 11 members of his family had sold their kidneys for one million rupees. There are 17 families in the area, every member of which has donated one of his kidneys.

Sources said a kidney centre in Rawalpindi offered Rs105,000 for a kidney, out of which Rs20,000 was paid to the agent. The seller contacts the buyer only through the hospital agent and meets him in person only on the day of the operation. The seller and buyer undergo medical tests. The recipient incurs all the expenses that amount to around one million rupees. The donor also remains hospitalized for a week after the operation. At least 30 to 40 donors and recipients can be seen sitting in the canteen or lawn of the kidney centre at any given time. The buyers come from all over Pakistan and the Middle East.

The clinic is being run by a retired army urologist.

Sargodha District Coordination Officer Hassan Iqbal conducted an inquiry into the sale of kidneys on the directive of the Punjab governor.

He observed that kidneys were being sold because of poverty and social injustice. He said the business was being done voluntarily and without coercion.

He observed that the donors could not do heavy work and needed post-operative care.

The DCO added that he had asked the Punjab government to announce a rehabilitation package for the kidney-sellers of Sultanpur Mor and surrounding areas. In the first stage, the social welfare department required Rs1.2 million to train 50 of the affected people in using the locally available raw material to make articles that had market value. A trainee would daily get Rs80 during the sixth-month programme.

Programmes need to be launched to educate people about the hazards of kidney-selling and to discourage the practice of paying large amounts of money to girls’ parents.