Brahui in CSS
Sir,
Brahui is one of the regional languages of Pakistan spoken in different parts of Baluchistan such as Kalat, Mastung, Khuzdar, Quetta. It has more than two million speakers in Balochistan, Afghanistan and Iran. It has great importance in the history of Balochistan and its literature is also very popular.
It is unfortunate that Brahui is not among the regional subjects of the central superior services (CSS) examination. The FPSC authorities are humbly requested to review the choice of regional subjects and include Brahui in the group of regional subjects by making amendments in their subject selection rules.
Ubaid Zehri,
Khuzdar.
Deadly arteries
Sir,
Permit me to draw the attention of the authorities through the columns of your esteemed paper to the increasing number of road accidents in Karachi.
Road accidents have been on the increase in the city in spite of the work done by the traffic authorities. Many young and unsuspecting people lose their lives every day.
Bad road design is responsible for 35% of accidents out of the total of 30,000 to 32,000 taking place every year in the city, experts have said, as a newspaper has reported. Another writer, Asghar Soomro, wrote that the Pakistan Bureau of Statistic says 51,525 people died in road accidents in Pakistan from 2004 to 2013 and of this 9,639 deaths took place in Sindh.
These road accidents occur due to the lack of civic sense in the people and their ignorance of road and traffic signals. The pedestrians are overrun because they try to cross the roads at places of their choice. The number of accidents of people riding motorcycles is high because most of the young men are beginners and do not know how to ride one properly.
Another reason for fatal accidents is rash driving. Truck drivers are mostly drunk or high and do not give a fig for traffic rules. They drive their trucks at a high speed even through congested localities, and crush whoever comes in the way.
It is high time that the authorities took a serious view of the lapses on the part of drivers. This can be done only by levying heavy fines and forfeiting their licenses. Licenses, too, should be checked frequently. I shall be grateful if you kindly give publicity to the matter so that the traffic authorities wake up and take strong measures against erring drivers.
Muhammad Arhum Imran,
Via email.
Child rape
Sir,
Child rape is every parent’s nightmare and it can happen to any parent. This problem hardly gets any attention but it has gone up. These children are often not just raped but murdered and their bodies are dumped. There is no proper child protection mechanism in the provinces to deal with it.
Recently, an 11-year-old child’s body was found inside the shrine of Qalander Baba in the provincial capital Peshawar within the jurisdiction of Inqlab police station. He and his brothers had gone to a mosque to study the Holy Quran, according to his father’s statement. He was raped and murdered. The victim was a student of class three.
A month earlier, a suspect identified as Munawar Zaman was arrested on charges of kidnapping and raping a girl of the same age, who had gone to Tatara park with a relative. In Kasur, the police registered two cases against the peon of a school on charges of raping two children. One of his victims was a deaf child from grade 3 who complained to his father by hand gestures that the peon had been raping him for quite some time and had been threatening him to keep quiet.
One can only imagine what it is like in the rest of the country. It is a punishment for parents, who shoulder the blame and shame of such cases in the absence of proper support from social services.
In such crucial cases, time is of essence and speedy investigation are needed. Also, important is the way in which the privacy of these cases are handled. If the records are not sealed the victim and their entire family can suffer. We live in a conservative society where it is considered taboo to discuss such cases.
We also need proper data on such cases for the state to be able to act. Whatever as a society we think about this issue and whatever our political and religious leaders say, we should be able to agree that it must be stopped. We should not avert our eyes to the exploitation of our children. We will then all be equally responsible for the crime.
Sabir Shah Hoti,
Via email.
Sufi shrine
Sir,
A terrible incident took place on Sunday April 2, 2017 in Sargodha, where the custodian of a Sufi shrine killed twenty people. This was done in the name of religion. In Pakistan, numerous shrines and holy sites are spreading the teachings of love, peace, harmony and humanity. For centuries the famous shrines of Abul Hassan Ali Ibn Usman al-Jullabi al-Hajveri al-Ghaznawi, Khwaja Fariduddin Masud Ganjshakar, Baha-ud-din Zakariya, and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar have been a source of spreading religion throughout the Subcontinent.
Unfortunately, sometimes these shrines are used for illegal activities. It is a tragedy that a few shrines are being used for politics as a small number of custodians are members of the National Assembly.
Mansoor Ahmed,
Faisalabad.
Karachi streetlights
Sir,
Through your newspaper, I want to draw attention to the lack of streetlights in Karachi. In many places poles or the infrastructure has been erected by the power has not been supplied or the streetlight not set up. In darkness, street crime and accidents take place every day. Last week, Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar chaired a meeting on using the Annual Development Programme 2017-18 funds. One of the schemes to be included is the installation and repairs of street lights. “These development works must be carried out on a priority basis. The citizens of Karachi deserve better and more facilities, and we must achieve this aim at any cost,” he said. We hope he can deliver.
Shabia Bashir Chouhan
Karachi.
Book day
Sir,
International Children’s Book Day is annually celebrated all over the world on April 2 since 1967. This day is meant to encourage children to read. But in Pakistan, we do not see it being valued. So it is my humble opinion that the government do something to prioritize such days. A Gallup survey revealed several years ago that about 25% of Pakistanis read. It is heartening to see, however, that more and more people are turning up for the Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore book fairs. Gwadar even held one recently. The average print run for a book is between 1,000 to 2,000 copies and the average book price is between US$1 to $3, according to the CIA World FactBook.
Qandeel Gulab,
Turbat.
Pakistan data
Sir,
This is with reference to the World Bank Group report that appeared in different sections of the press regarding the facilities and ease of doing business in Pakistan The World Bank issued its Doing Business Report, 2017 that ranked Pakistan 174 out of 189 economies on the ‘Trading Across Border’ indicator. The report has misleading facts and figures about Pakistan. Some of them are:
It has been reported that documentary compliance for an export takes 59 hours and costs $307, while in reality, the time taken for it is a mere 12 hours at a cost of $45 only.
Similarly, border compliance was reported to be taking 75 hours against five as recorded by the Customs Computerised System. The cost for the former was placed at $426 against $105 of the latter as claimed by government functionaries. The cost of an import was also reported to be higher by the World Bank.
Documentary compliance was reported to cost $786 and border compliance $957, while government figures come to $260 and $545, respectively. Officials say that such discrepancies in the World Bank’s report were also highlighted by various stakeholders at a recent meeting in Karachi in which the World Bank’s Doing Business Team participated. Customs brokers and exporters were astonished to see such exaggerated figures in the report.
The government should look into the matter and ask the bank to revise the report and bring the facts on the record.
Iftikhar Mirza,
Islamabad.