THE politics of reconciliation has proved to be a total disaster for the residents of Karachi as over 6,000 people have lost their lives in political and ethnic killings since 2008.
Turf wars between political parties and rampant extortion has resulted in the flight of capital from Karachi.
Karachi is the economic hub of Pakistan contributing over 60 per cent of the revenue to the national exchequer, yet no one is willing to put an end to the killings in the city which is actually the jugular vein of Pakistan. The police force is politicised and ill-equipped.
There is no point in investing a sizable chunk of the budget on defence if life and property of citizens are not safeguarded.
Even the suo motu by the Chief Justice of Pakistan last year on Karachi killings did not yield the desired result as the perpetrators were neither identified nor brought to justice.
If an elected prime minister can be shown the door for not writing a letter, then some heads must roll for the innocent lives lost in Karachi.
It is time somebody at the helm of affairs called a spade a spade and devised a strategy to stop the massive bloodshed in the city, whatever the political repercussions may be.
MUHAMMED ZAFIR ZIAKarachi
Polio campaignTHIS is regarding the news report (July 21) on the killing of a doctor associated with the polio immunisation campaign in Karachi’s Gadap area.
The assailants shot the doctor in cold blood in his clinic. The murdered doctor was a union council-level polio worker who was responsible for planning and implementing vaccination campaigns in the area. As a consequence, the planned polio vaccination campaign was suspended in the area.
Pakistan recorded the highest number of polio cases in the world in 2011, and the Gadap area was among the three large reservoirs of polio in Pakistan from 2007 until 2011, along with Fata and Quetta, Qilla Abdullah and Pishin in Balochistan.
The recent incident in Gadap would further increase the vulnerability of polio campaigns in the city, and the prospects of polio eradication in Pakistan grow weaker.
The added fuel to the fire is a widely-held belief in communities dictated by religious extremists that oral polio vaccine administration is a western conspiracy to sterilise the population. Reportedly Gadap, Baldia and parts of Gulshan-i-Iqbal areas in Karachi have high refusals to take the oral polio vaccine.
The issue of this refusal should be handled with great care through confidence-building and foolproof security arrangements for the teams which are required to work in sensitive areas.
There is a need to work diligently to change the negative perceptions by working closely with schoolteachers, religious and community leaders and the media.
FOUZIA RAHMAN Karachi