The little good left in us

I remember thinking “why me?” as I ran after the man on a motorbike who had snatched my purse. I was screaming “stop him” and “how is this happening to me?” at the same time all the while thinking that any moment this would stop – that he’d turn around and return the purse, saying he’d made a mistake or that I’d wake up. Nothing of the sort happened. Of course no one stopped him but this is probably because they were too busy watching me attempt a sprint in heels or in all likelihood, as the police later explained to me, they didn’t want to get involved in case the robber was armed.

Once you’ve been robbed, and are over the initial shock, you look for all kinds of reasons to almost justify the crime happening – you were robbed because you turned into a dark alley, or were driving alone at 1am, or were just plain careless. However, I was on my way to Café Aylanto, on Zamzama, at 8:30 in the evening. This is a road where it’s fairly hard to find parking and where each outlet/restaurant has at least one armed guard. Yet a man on a motorbike whizzed past me and snatched my purse. He didn’t stop for one second.

A minute after it happened, as I headed over to the restaurant to meet my friend who was waiting for me, as if out of nowhere, all these people came out to ask if I was okay. I was upset that no one helped me – they could have screamed with (for?) me – even though I recognise that no one wants to get involved in what could prove to be a dangerous situation. Thankfully I got off easy. And put my shock aside to do the needful: cancel credit cards, my mobile phone number and then, the dreaded task of going to the police to file a report. Except that in my case, thanks to colleagues, I had a pain free experience at the Clifton police station.

By the end of the night I realised I was just another statistic in Karachi’s ever growing crime scene. As dramatic as this will sound, I’m still furious that this stranger calmly snatched a part of my life away. It creeps me out that through my purse he knows where I live, work, bank, eat (lots of restaurants cards), shop (lots of receipts), what meds I’m on (homeopathic history on paper) and what movies I’ve seen (again, lots of ticket stubs I’ve collected over the years). I’m also angry that I didn’t have a place to go to where I could vent my anger – telling everyone I know doesn’t count, though it helps.

The following day I decided to chuck out my positive attitude. It had so far done me no good. And I’m sure it annoyed the hell out of everyone. But before I could resign myself into becoming a cynical Karachian (are you thinking if there’s another kind?) I got a call from a stranger saying that he’d found my purse on the road, got my number from my service card and that I could collect it from him at this address. Less than 24 hours after being robbed, I had gotten some of it back. The thief took my debit and credit card, my cellphone and my precious lip balm. The mean man also threw away most of my memorabilia. What he didn’t take, however, was my confidence and ultimately the belief that there is still some good left in us. Right after getting my purse, I went out to dinner, driving on my own. I never let anything affect my appetite.—Muna Khan

Liberty or poverty?

On the eve of May Day every year, newspaper photographers try to depict the plight of labourers across the country. Their most favourite image seems to be workmen pulling hot, crimson iron bars out of equally red, burning foundries. This is indeed the most hazardous task workers are exposed to. The other favourite subjects of the photo journalists are: old men and children reeling under heavy burdens, men pulling behind heavily loaded hand-carts, women toiling in brick kilns, fields or on roads.

But a picture that particularly attracted my attention was that of a youngish woman wearing a cap, scarf and uniform and pouring petrol into a motorcycle at a petrol station. Colleagues confirmed that some petrol stations in the city have employed women attendants. It is not that women have not been doing tough jobs.

For centuries they have been ploughing fields, reaping and harvesting crops, chopping trees for fuel wood. They have also provided cheap labour to factories of various products, particularly that of garments. In fact, they have been doing more and harder work than their male counterparts. For instance, women work for a living during the day and take care of household chores in the evening. How many men in our society do that? Women working as domestic help in posh and not-so-posh areas, I believe, did not enjoy a holiday on May Day, celebrated as the labourers’ day to help improve their lot.

Women donning police uniforms and grappling with female protesters has become an old story. Neither is it new that women have joined various corps of the army, navy and air force, whose hospitals and educational institutions they had already been serving. Now they have become pilots, flying fighter planes, though there have already been some commercial pilots, riding tanks and firing artillery barrages and missiles salvoes.

Despite that all these tough jobs they have successfully assumed, which were formerly associated with manliness, for me, women working at a petrol station is really something new. Petrol station workers routinely work 24-hour shifts, sometimes stretching it to 48 wakeful hours.

It may be a manifestation of women’s liberty, but it is more than of growing poverty which is shoving urban women into such arduous tasks.—Naseer Ahmad

Sister cities

Lord Mayors of the Sindh metropolis and the Mauritius’ capital city in a recently concluded agreement declared Karachi and Port Louis to be ‘sister-cities’ that seems to contradict what Mark Twain wrote in his travelogue Following the Equator: “You gather the idea that Mauritius was made first and then heaven, and that heaven was copied after Mauritius.”

An agreement signed on the occasion said that ‘residents of the two cities had decided to enter into a Sister-City relationship … to … bring the two cities closer’. It is physically an impossible task as Port Louis lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean while Karachi is located at the edge of the ‘Arabian Sea’.

As usual, the Karachi mayor in the meeting reiterated that the Sindh city was being developed ‘rapidly’ into a ‘modern’ city. However, he did not clarify if by ‘modern’, he meant re-creating the entire city on the pattern of ‘artistic’ expressionism (because when we look at the mess which is being called development work, we can distinctly see the tendency … to distort reality) and modernism, which embraces disruption.

One also hopes by ‘sister-cities’ the two mayors did not mean twins. One can only pray that, God forbid, Port Louis never has to face water shortages or power cuts like the ones afflicting Karachians, traffic jams despite the road-widening projects and flyovers, the lawlessness or lack of cleanliness witnessed in our beloved city of the Quaid, or the same level of official indifference to problems the people of the city have to face on a day-to-day basis.— Ghouse Mohiuddin

Compiled by Syed Hassan Ali
Email: karachian@dawn.com

20 suicide bombings claimed 213 lives since 2006

PESHAWAR: With the recent suicide bombing in Charsadda, the number of such bombings in the country has risen to 20 over a little more than a year. Thirteen of the incidents took place in the NWFP and adjoining tribal areas.

Over the period, 213 people have been killed in suicide incidents. Eight of the incidents took place since 2007, killing about 74 persons.Karachi has been the hardest-hit where three incidents of suicide bombings claimed about 64 lives. The deadliest was the Nishtar Park tragedy when a suicide bomber blew himself up on April 11, 2006 at an Eid Miladun Nabi congregation, killing 58 people, including the top leadership of the Sunni Tehrik.

In yet another incident of suicide bombing, four people, including an American diplomat, were killed when an explosive-laden car rammed into the diplomat’s vehicle near the US consulate-general in Karachi on Mar 2, 2006.

In the third incident, central leader of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and the Shia Ulema Council Allama Hassan Turabi and his nephew were killed by a suicide bomber on July 4, 2006.

Eight incidents of suicide bombings occurred in the NWFP since 2006 -- two in Peshawar and one each in Charsadda, Dargai (Malakand), Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Bannu and Hangu.

The first incident took place in Hangu district when a suicide bomber struck an Ashura procession on Feb 9, 2006, killing about 20 persons. The death-toll rose to 37 in two days because of subsequent sectarian violence.

In the deadliest occurrence in the NWFP, 40 army recruits were killed when a bomber hit a military base in Dargai, about 100km north of Peshawar, on Nov 8, 2006.

In another high-profile incident in Dhaki Dalgaran, 15 people had been killed on Jan 27, 2007, including Peshawar city police chief Malik Saad, DSP Khan Raziq, two union council nazims and a naib nazim.A suicide bomber blew himself up in a courtroom in Quetta on Feb 17, 2007, killing 16 people. The deceased had included senior civil judge Abdul Wahid Durrani and six lawyers.

Out of five incidents of suicide bombing in the tribal areas, three have taken place in Datta Khel, Mirali and Miramshah areas of the North Waziristan Agency. The incidents had claimed the lives of 12 military personnel and a woman. Two other incidents have occurred in South Waziristan and the Bannu Frontier Region.

Financial, academic health of Urdu varsity under scrutiny

Like many other ‘national’ ventures, the dream of Urdu University has gone sour. That the university has hit serious snags in its formative years became evident when the Auditor General of Pakistan last month set up two committees to conduct financial as well performance-based audit of the university.

Only massive administrative reforms can put it on tracks to develop into a respected higher education institution.

The Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology (FUUAST), as it goes by its official name, was the first, and probably the last, university to be set up under the Model University Ordinance 2002. All other public sector universities had rejected the controversial ordinance because it demanded they change their original acts according to the new law.

Supporters of the Urdu language believed that soon the university would achieve the status of a top notch research institution of the country.

At the time of its inauguration in November 2003, the university’s deputy chancellor and poet Jamiluddin Aali had proclaimed that “the university has been set up on the lines of Sir Syed’s Aligarh Muslim University and the same spirit would be maintained in running the Urdu university”.

However, much to the dismay of its pioneers, the university has completely failed to make a mark due to the mismanagement, infighting among its top officials and recruitments made on personal liking and disliking.

Still the powerful Urdu-speaking community ensured enough funding for the university from the very beginning. But the goodwill and support was wasted by the management and the university started facing all kinds of problems.

The idea behind establishing the Urdu university was to make it a centre of excellence where every subject would be taught in Urdu. But no practical steps were ever taken by it to translate the modern subjects for the purpose.

Jamiluddin Aali once said that FUUAST campuses would be opened worldwide. But the bitter reality is that even at home it could open only three campuses. Two of them, the Abdul Haq campus of arts, and the Gulshan-i-Iqbal campus for science are located in Karachi while its principal seat is in Islamabad — based in the Wapda House on temporary basis.

Problems started in the second year of the university’s existence when Dr Hassan Shah, brought from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) as administrator of its Islamabad campus, was fired on the charges of corruption and mismanagement.

He not only stuffed the campus with employees of his choice, but also wasted millions of rupees on fake projects — allegations which an investigative committee confirmed.

Its ‘HEC-recognised university’ label attracted students in great numbers to its Islamabad campus which offered degrees in subjects like Computer Sciences, Business Administration, and Economics.

But over the last few years the Islamabad campus has started losing quality students. Now it has the reputation of being the last refuge for the left-overs — students who fail to get admission in any other university.

A visit to the campus found some MBA students dissatisfied with their academic situation.

“We have only one satisfaction — that our degrees are HEC- recognised. Otherwise it was not a worthwhile experience here,” they said.

“It seems the varsity is run on ad-hoc basis,” one student said, recalling that one particular teacher took just one class in whole semester and nobody bothered.”

They agreed that mediocre students come to this university, but said, “that does not mean that we have no right to a quality faculty”.

Even the environs of the campus don’t fit a campus. Scores of car workshops are located behind the part of the Wapda House the FUUAST occupies and the din the workshops raise make serious study impossible. Though the Capital Development Authority has allotted 150 acres of land to the FUUAST for its campus in Chak Shahzad, it would take quite some to build it.

For the past one year the university is without a vice- chancellor since Dr Mohsin Iqbal resigned, reportedly on personal reasons but in reality because nobody listened to him. Hopefully, it would get a new vice-chancellor as the post was recently advertised.

Meanwhile, the registrar of the university has been sent on forced leave “so that the two audit committees set up in the last week of April may carry out their tasks unhindered”.

The university’s powerful senate has recommended that officials found involved in any kind of corruption should be removed from service under the Removal from Service Ordinance, 2000.

Isn’t it an identity crisis?

DESPITE having introduced mobile units for the registration of computerised national identity cards besides an office in the city, the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) has failed to register even half of the population of the district.

Those who want to get the computerised cards have to go through unbearable ordeal at the authority office. Muhammad Bukhsh, who has travelled miles to reach the Nadra office, says there is no proper waiting place outside the Nadra office and card-seekers have to wait for hours for their turn under the scorching sun. Another villager Asif Gulyani has grown weary of repeated visits to Nadra. He says that his card carried a few mistakes and when he asked the officials to correct them, he was told to re-apply for the card.

There is a growing need to establish Nadra offices in Taunsa and the tribal areas. Those from Taunsa have to travel for one hour while the tribesmen, in some cases, have to travel for 24 hours to reach the DG Khan city.

The district council realising the problem of the public adopted a resolution for the establishment of at least one more registration centre in the city. Let’s see if our local council representatives are heard or not.

Nowadays teenagers’ mania for rash motorcycle driving and lavish use of mobile phone is sweeping the city. Underage drivers have taken the city roads to storm and risk their own lives and of other pedestrians and motorists. The use of cell phones is quite frequent in classrooms. The situation is worrisome for the heads of educational institutions and parents.

The students of District Public School and College (DPSC), the Government High School No 1 and the Government Jamia High School and several private schools resort to violent road shows in the morning and after the school. Besides rash driving, students often try to down each other through wheelies. Besides rash driving, another issue irking the societal norm is the use of mobile phone in classrooms. Many a times the class gets distracted when a ding-dong tune of the mobile phone rings. Zahid Nizam, a parent, demanded school administrations ban the use of cell phone inside the school limits. Member of the National Assembly Meena Jafir Leghari told Dawn it was responsibility of traffic police and heads of educational institutions to ban the use of cell phone and rash driving among the students. Civil society representatives demanded the DPSC principal pay attention to the issues.

A seminar was held by Gull Fatima, a non-government organisation, and Nai Umeed Hospital in which Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) Chief Brigadier Babar Idrees emphasised the need to raise awareness among the public against use of narcotics, saying that only ANF or the government could not bring about any change on this front. He said 610 tonnes of poppy yield had been recorded in Afghanistan in 2006, a 59-per cent increase against previous year. An ANF station would be established in south Punjab, he said.

Delay in approval of CNG stations by the authorities has created problems for people. There are two CNG stations in the city which are insufficient to meet the demand of the people. The people demanded the establishment of more CNG stations in the city and along with Indus Highway from Ramaq to Shahwali. On Indus Highway from Ramaq, the last post on Punjab-the NWFP border, to

Shahwali, the last post on Punjab-Sindh border, there is no CNG station. Chamber of Commerce and Industries President Mian Amir Naseem Sheikh demanded the establishment of CNG stations along Indus Highway and in the DG Khan city.