GB & Skardu
Sir,
It has been observed during the journey towards Gilgit Baltistan and Skardu that there was too much need to install street lights. Due to the lack of streetlights and road guards people here continuously face danger when commuting. It is a six-hour journey from Gilgit to Skardu.
During winter there was a shortage of electricity and it came on only three to four hours a day. As a result we could not provide tourists hot water. Locals and some hotel managers used gas cylinders, which is risky.
A great step taken by the GB government is to provide the transport service from Skardu to Islamabad under the name Northern Area Transport Corporation (NATCO). And it is cheaper than what is locally available.
It has been also observed that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is playing a major role as a game-changer for Gilgit Baltistan. They have made carpeted roads, tunnels, bridges in GB, Hunza valley, Gulmit etc. And in Skardu medical fitness certificates were displayed at every restaurant for their staff, including cooks, waiters, counter managers. The food department is working to check the quality of restaurant food as well.
The police has also been performing well in Gilgit Baltistan and Skardu. They check each and every vehicle at each check post and register the names of newcomers.
Local people say that in last PPP government’s tenure they had Syed Mehdi Shah for chief minister of Gilgit Baltistan, but even though he belongs to Skardu, he did not do enough work and as a result, he could not subsequently win in his own constituency.
Shahid Ahmed Qureshi,
Badin.
CSS in Urdu
Sir,
The Lahore High Court has directed the FPSC to conduct the CSS in Urdu from 2018. Currently tests in various departments including for the induction of judicial judges in courts are being conducted in English. Therefore, singling out the CSS will have grave implications for the aspirants, and is likely to cause uneasiness and anguish. The decision is a duplication of a similar decision passed in 2015 by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It’s undoubtedly a balanced decision however, the fact of the matter is that despite Urdu being the national language, in Pakistan the state has done little to spread it in the masses, especially those who live in rural areas.
Even after the calls of Supreme Court to explain public documents in Urdu, no progress has been made. Resultantly, a majority of people neither speak nor write standard Urdu. The conclusion may cause disagreement in various ethnicities. But because this decision was abrupt, it is also an injustice to the aspirants who have been preparing for a couple of years and have focused on English. Therefore, may we request that this decision be reconsidered.
Adnan David,
Kech.
PSL sadness
Sir,
The PSL (Pakistan Super League) is a very authentic cricket festival held annually in Pakistan and which encourages the youth of the 4 provinces to compete. It is one of the most beloved festivals of Pakistan and yearly cricket lovers gather to watch it. This year cricket lovers gathered in Lahore to watch out the PSL final match. But they were so sad when the Quetta Gladiators were defeated by Peshawar Zalmis. Quetta’s instructor Murad Ismail couldn’t help his team win.
Qandeel Baloch,
Turbat.
Water fraud
Sir,
The Supreme court of Pakistan has ordered the immediate removal of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) Managing Director Misbahuddin Farid during the hearing of a case on the government’s failure to provide safe drinking water and sanitation facilities to the people of Karachi. The top court directed that a qualified officer should be appointed instead. This is an excellent decision for the implementation of merit instead of the likes and whims of those in power. Unfortunately, the politicians and rulers of Sindh are the main hurdles in the way of the execution of merit. They always ignore people of worth and prefer their own favourites.
Water provided to the people of Sindh is hazardous and unfit for human consumption and substandard. It is negligence on the part of the Sindh government to have installed poor quality Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants along with non-functional laboratories and testing instruments. PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari visited Tharparkar district many times and claimed to provide safe drinking water in the drought-hit region. He should know that due to malnutrition and waterborne diseases, children have died there. He doesn’t know that water is essential for life? Contaminated water is estimated to result in more than half a million deaths per year. Over 90% of deaths from diarrheal diseases in the developing world today occur in children under 5 years old. Contaminated water together with a lack of sanitation was estimated to cause about one percent of disability adjusted life years worldwide. Malnutrition, especially protein-energy malnutrition, can decrease children’s resistance to infections, including water-related diarrheal diseases. Sixty million people are estimated to have been poisoned by well water contaminated by excessive fluoride, which is dissolved from granite rocks. The effects are particularly evident in the bone deformations of children. Similarly, Protozoan, bacterial and viral diseases like Cholera, Typhoid fever and Hepatitis A are transmitted due to contaminated water.
I urge the Sindh government to take concrete measures to supply safe drinking water to the people of province.
Mansoor Ahmed
Faisalabad.
Women’s Day
Sir,
Women’s day is globally celebrated on March 8 to acknowledge the value of women in life. Despite celebrating women’s day, women in Pakistan still suffer from violence, abuse, honour killing and beating. Moreover, thousands of women, all round the world, fall into depression because of a lack of awareness of post-partum blues. As it is a male-dominated society, women often cannot even speak up or are unaware of their rights. And when they do say something, they are not taken seriously. The government’s job, in this case, is to create systems and mechanisms to be able to shield women from discrimination. The women’s shelters, for example, need to be properly maintained with properly trained staff. We do not have enough women police stations and not enough women medico legal officers, who are crucial when it comes to reporting, managing and prosecuting rape cases.
Furthermore, if you look at a majority of pictures that appear in newspapers, it seems like all our decision-makers are men. We rarely see women in those pictures.
Fida Zaman,
Turbat.
Ending polio
Sir,
The polio campaign was ended in five districts of Khyber pakhtunkhwa with 100 percent coverage for Peshawar, Nowshera, Charsada and Swabi. According to data, the Inactivated Polio Vaccination (IPV) total target in this campaign was nearly 5,560,942. Approximately 322 teams were there to vaccinate more than 320 children and nearly 2,076 security personnel were working to ensure the security of the teams. In Swabi nearly 128 patients had been registered in nine months.
Mehraj Altaf,
Turbat.
Internet in Turbat
Sir,
It has been a almost three weeks since 3G and 4G internet services have been off in Turbat for unknown reasons. This has created several problems for people. Businesses are going to suffer losses. People are unable to contact their loved ones who are working abroad.
Aqsa Babul,
Turbat.
Combating terrorism
Sir,
The acts of terrorism in Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi reinforce brutal reality that we have may have injured this serpent and monster, but not killed it. As long as financial, logistical and medical facilitators motivated by their convoluted ideological brainwashing, or greed for financial benefits, along with corruption within law enforcement and border security are not eliminated, this serpent will continue to haunt this country, bleeding its economy and killing innocent citizens.
The billions we invest in procuring our defense capability are meaningless unless we invest in education and health to improve our human resources, so that these breeding grounds for terrorists to groom are discouraged. When suicide bombers manage to come from across the border and reach our cities, it reflects on poor performance and loopholes within law enforcement, border security management and intelligence agencies. This is a collective failure of all institutions of state tasked to provide security to citizens of Pakistan and elected civilian leadership which has failed to nip the evil through effective implementation of laws and monitoring.
Unfortunately corruption and unchecked greed within state institutions and their conflicts of interest in corporate commercial ventures have become a hurdle in the need for concerted focusing on main purpose for which they were created, namely security, law enforcement and 24/7 monitoring.
The channels for foreign funding of terrorism are same that is used by corrupt elite for money laundering and we cannot eliminate the former unless all loopholes are plugged. If hospitals and clinics are providing medical services to terrorists in violation of existing laws mandating them to inform police, they should be given exemplary punishments irrespective of their political clout. When elected executive is hesitant to take action against terrorism, they lose their constitutional right to rule, because they stand accused of violating their oath. Similarly if state funded security apparatus are guilty of patronizing private militias they exceed their constitutional mandate.
Pakistan’s national security and sovereignty must precede any other delirious agenda motivated by our strategic location, because internal security threatens our economic viability. The ill-founded adventurism pursuits for short term myopic gains of individual juntas pursued by former regimes of Zia and Musharraf today haunt this country and pose biggest threat to our national security. Nobody holding public office should have conflicts of interest, period.
Malik Tariq Ali,
Lahore.
Democratic norms
Sir,
This is reference to the behavior unbecoming of mature elected parliamentarians from both sides of the aisle witnessed by unfortunate Pakistanis on March 9. This cult-like sycophancy and its patronization by political leadership has no place in a democracy, because it is reminiscent of tyrannical dictators, not elected politicians. The scuffle and abuses hurled by a few parliamentarians on the premises of the National Assembly is unacceptable.
It is the responsibility of the Speaker to ensure neutrality and allow members to express their opinions and criticism, within bounds of parliamentary norms and decency, which unfortunately is lacking.
The essence of democracy is right of dissent, tolerance and strict accountability. While democratically elected leaders enjoy constitutional powers, this entails a penalty that they must adhere to a stricter code of ethics than those applicable to people in general, refrain from abuse of power, because the decisions they make impacts the fate and destiny of millions. Even their private lives are open to fair public scrutiny. They should have no conflicts of interest during their tenure, nor their family members or themselves should have ongoing commercial interests.
It is incumbent upon parliamentarians and office holders of elected government to desist from resorting to physical violence, nor cast aspersions on the loyalty and patriotism of others. Merely getting elected does not confer upon an elected party the right to pass judgement on the patriotism of the opposition. Those who indulge in financial terrorism, by resorting to money laundering and corruption, driving the country to financial insolvency are as disloyal as those who are involved in acts of terrorism.
The elected executive is under obligation to exercise restraint and enforce the writ of the law on those involved in terrorism. Every citizen of Pakistan has the right to reside, do business or get employment in any part of this country. Enough time has elapsed and it is now incumbent upon political leadership to abide by strict code of ethics, submit to accountability and have no split loyalties. If this country is not safe for their assets or their children to be located here, they have no right to hold any political office.
Ali Malik Tariq,
Lahore.
Karachi’s mayor
Sir,
The mayor of Karachi, Waseem Akhtar, has presented a 100-day performance report on the cleanliness drive in the city and blamed the Sindh government for restraining his powers. Waseem Akhtar became Mayor of Karachi on August 24, 2016. He was home minister of Sindh on 12 May 2007 when the deadliest riots and a series of violent clashes took place which resulted in a number of deaths. His party has been ruling the urban areas of Sindh, particularly Karachi, Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas for decades. His party fellows Dr. Farooq Sattar (1988-1992) and Syed Mustafa Kamal (2005-2010) have served as mayors of Karachi. The MQM shared and enjoyed power in nearly each and every regime. This is a sad state of affairs that Karachi was turning into a rubbish heap during those years and no one paid attention to it, including Waseem Akhtar in the past. Garbage piled up as the city faced ethnic and sectarian conflicts, crimes, political unrest and violence.
In reality, all political forces and governments of the past are equally responsible for the damage done to this city. Preference was given to promoting a culture of corruption, nepotism and mismanagement by the PPP governments in the province. They oppressed and browbeat people in rural Sindh who have needed safe drinking water, health, education and shelter. Karachi was the “City of Lights” in the 1960s and 1970s and was known for its vibrant nightlife which now has been covered in trash.
Waseem Akhtar should focus on his existing powers rather than crying. Not all work requires funds but needs will and planning. Lighting in the city, beautification of parks, action against ghost employees and schools are other burning issues.
Mansoor Ahmed,
Faisalabad.
Islamabad Airport
Sir,
The target set forth by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for the inauguration of the New Islamabad International Airport is August 14, 2017. It is reported that the project is speeding up and near completion and would be ready for the launch according to the schedule announced by the PM. What, however, is shocking to know is that a Senate Standing Committee which recently met in Islamabad has expressed its concern over the establishment of 36 housing societies in close proximity to the new airport. In view of the scenario, the committee chairman and members it is believed have asked the relevant authorities to submit a detailed report on the status of these housing societies.
All said and done, what one fails to understand is why has the committee chairman and members have come out of their deep slumber now? Most of these societies were launched more than a decade ago with proper NOCs granted by the relevant authorities. Many of them have reached the pinnacle of their development work. Thousands of people, including overseas Pakistanis, have invested their hard-earned money in these societies and are anxiously looking forward to building their houses on the plots they have purchased in these societies. It would not only be inappropriate but also unlawful to disband any of these societies at this point in time.
In the backdrop of the facts given above, the intent of the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat is ostensibly malafide. One expects that the chairman of the Senate Standing Committee and the members of the committee would rise above themselves and act sensibly in dealing with this sensitive issue and safeguard the larger interest of the thousands of investors who, as mentioned earlier, have invested their hard-earned money in these projects. The incumbent government should also take immediate cognizance of this critical situation before things get out of hand.
Fazal Elahi,
Islamabad.