| June 23, 2005 | Thursday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 15, 1426 |
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Camel kids’ plight
Massive power failures
THERE is some hope now for Siachen. Nine days after Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh spoke of turning the glacier into a “peace mountain”, the follow-up from New Delhi is positive. On Tuesday, the Indian army announced that it had prepared a roadmap for the withdrawal of its troops from Siachen. In a statement, the Indian army chief said that he had given his “viewpoint” to the government for converting the Saltoro ridge and the glacier into a demilitarized zone. The idea of the glacier’s demilitarization makes sense because both sides have suffered more casualties from the mountainous terrain’s harsh climate than from enemy action. The financial cost for keeping the troops warm and well supplied is high for both. This realization has been with Islamabad and New Delhi for quite some time, but neither had the vision to clinch a deal and withdraw simultaneously. In 1989, during Mr Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Islamabad for the Saarc summit, he had indicated to his Pakistani counterpart, Ms Benazir Bhutto, that he intended to pull his troops back. However, Mr Gandhi was ousted from power and was later assassinated. That killed the idea, and no progress took place.
Under the changed circumstances in South Asia, there is every reason why Pakistan and India should pursue the matter in earnest. The peace process has received full backing from their people, and it is highly unlikely that hawkish opposition to an agreement for demilitarization will get popular support. The issue now poses a challenge to the two governments. If they pursue the matter in real earnest, there is no reason why they cannot finally agree on a demilitarized Siachen.
Besides Siachen, there are some other questions that also need to be sorted out. Balighar, Kishanganga and Wullar are sensitive issues because they concern sharing of river water. Unlike Siachen, which is basically a security issue, these three projects are of an economic nature, because Pakistan’s entire agriculture is dependent on water from the Indus and its tributaries. Any interference with their flow adversely affects Pakistan’s farm sector and hence its economy. So far, the Indus waters treaty has been working satisfactorily for the last 45 years, and neither side had any cause for complaint. However, for the last few years Pakistan has felt concerned about the Indian attempt to draw water from the rivers assigned to Pakistan by building irrigation and power projects on rivers Chenab, Neelum and Jhelum. In the case of the Balighar dam, Islamabad has already approached the World Bank to appoint a neutral expert to study the situation as stipulated in the 1960 treaty. One wishes things had not come to such a pass that Islamabad had no option but to seek the World Bank’s intercession.
India would do well to allay Pakistan’s concerns. A reference to the World Bank would not have been necessary if New Delhi had stopped work on the Balighar project or made alterations so as to stay within the confines of the treaty. The lack of progress on the three issues runs the risk of slowing if not stopping the process of normalization. For this reason, the earlier the three issues are got out of the way the better. The removal of these irritants is vital if Islamabad and New Delhi are to move towards the ultimate goal of resolving the Kashmir issue without which a durable peace in South Asia will not be possible.
WHILE it is a relief to know that the first batch of 22 Pakistani camel kids arrived in Lahore on Tuesday, after last month’s Unicef-UAE accord on the return of young jockeys in the Gulf to their home countries, the Pakistan government must now make the necessary efforts for their rehabilitation. These children have suffered enough in the camel camps. They were kept deliberately underfed to reduce weight as camel jockeys by their masters, and many jockeys had fallen off the racing camels, sustaining grievous, sometimes fatal, injuries in the process. Children as young as four were strapped to the camels’ back from where their frightened cries were meant to spur on the animal. Growing international criticism has forced the UAE to come down with a heavy hand on camel racing. It has banned the participation of children under 16 in these races and is even looking into the possibility of using remote-controlled robots as jockeys.
But this does not mean that the Pakistani government can be complacent in the belief that children will no longer be smuggled out of the country, or that the 2,000 or so Pakistani jockeys in the Gulf will all be reunited with their families in due course. Human trafficking will continue as long as poverty exists in the country, and parents can be easily coaxed into ‘selling’ their children for other dangerous and illegal pursuits. That is why, in addition to the immediate task of rehabilitating the young returnees, the government would do well to view the problem of human trafficking from a broader angle and take preventive measures. Besides strengthening vigilance at all ports to prevent human smugglers from getting past the checkpoints, it would have to ensure that strict legal action is taken against traffickers. Just as important is the implementation of basic economic reforms aimed at alleviating poverty. The latter is the chief reason behind trafficking, and it is only by tackling it effectively that the government can hope to tighten the noose round human smuggling and put an end to the misery of thousands of children.
MERCURY soared to above 40 degrees Celsius in most parts of the country on Tuesday, and so did the number of power breakdowns. Karachi and Lahore were the worst hit; the two cities endured frequent, long and agonizing outages. While in Karachi it was the unexpected showers in parts of the city that the KESC blamed for massive breakdowns, in Lahore, where the temperature rose to 46 degrees, the Lahore Electric Supply Company recorded a fantastic 580 “minor trippings” and 23 major breakdowns in the preceding 24 hours. If this is the state of affairs in the country’s two biggest cities, one can well imagine the plight of those living in small cities and less developed towns. It is not as if a heat wave of this intensity was not expected; temperatures prevailing in the plains make for normal readings at this time of the year. It is sheer negligence and lack of proper planning and maintenance on the part of power distribution companies that play havoc with the system and make it liable to trip and fail in times of high demand. Line losses, averaging at over 20 per cent for Lesco and 40 per cent for the KESC — and not kite flying in Lahore or an odd shower in Karachi — are to blame for trippings and prolonged power outages that become the norm under extreme weather conditions.
The state of affairs has been there long enough for the government to have evolved a national strategy for dealing with frequent power breakdowns and heavy line losses. But no plan has been put in place nor funds provided for upgrading and streamlining the national grid and the distribution lines in the next fiscal year’s budget. Unless such a plan is formulated on an urgent basis and work begun on its implementation, domestic as well as industrial and commercial consumers will continue to suffer hardship at a high cost — also to the economy.