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By Dr Ijaz Ahsan
I have just read that Chief Minister has ordered a crackdown on hoarders of wheat. As a farmer who grows wheat, I would like to Mr CM that the primary responsibility for the wheat crisis rests not with hoarders. They are certainly a part of the problem. However, the most important cause of the wheat shortage in the country has to do with inefficiency and corruption in different government departments, as I shall now explain. Some time ago I decided to sell my wheat to the government - to PASSCO in fact - and I shall never forget what I went through. If one takes a few hundred maunds of wheat to the grain market, they fill it into bags, weigh it, and within an hour or two, hand you the cash and send you home. But dealing with the concerned government officials was an extended nightmare.
I was told to take the following actions, at almost every one of which I had to grease palms: Firstly, provide proof of ownership of land. Secondly, apply for permission to sell to them the precise quantity of wheat I desired to dispose of. Thirdly, buy from them empty bags, whose price would be refunded to me after they had received my wheat. Fourthly, take my wheat to Minichinabad Centre, forty kilometres away, rather than Bahawalnagar, which was close to my land. Fifthly, open an account at a bank in Minchinabad. Sixthly, deliver my wheat to them and receive a chit. Seventhly, come all the way to the Minchinabad Centre once again and receive a pay order in payment. Now I ask Chief Minister: why would a person sell to PASSCO unless he was out of his mind? The result, over the years, has been that the government departments fail to procure enough wheat. And new another sad story starts.
Punjab produces 85 percent of the country's wheat. It, therefore, has the responsibility of keeping adequate reserve of this staple food. Because of the incompetence and corruption of the procuring departments, not enough reserves are built up. On the other hand, because of incompetence and corruption in the department meant to prevent smuggling, hundreds of thousands of tons is smuggled to Afghanistan from NWFP, creating food shortage in that province. When Punjab fails to give them more and more wheat because its reserves are insufficient, then the ministers of the NWFP government hold out threats that they will come to Punjab, lift wheat by force, and will see who can prevent them. Please note how corruption and inefficiency in government departments leads to strained relations between provinces, destroying national integration and cohesion.
This year the situation has reached such a nadir that for the first time in my life, the police has been raiding farmers' residences to snatch wheat. These people are not hoarders. The small farmers always have to sell all their wheat at once. The somewhat bigger farmers sell some, and keep some, in order to sell it later at a better price. No government department in the past has been raiding farmers' residences, certainly not within a couple of months of the wheat harvest having come in. This shows the horrendous stage that has been reached due to the incompetence and corruption in the departments.
Another important reason for the wheat shortage is the failure of the Planned Parenthood department to check the increasingly rapid growth of our population. In 1947, the population of the Pakistan was not more than 3 crores. In the last sixty years, this has been allowed to increase to sixteen crores. The bellies of the five times greater number of people on the same area of land are a bottomless pit, which is impossible to fill. The people believe our religion forbids family planning, and hence shy away from it. Faced with such a situation, the Bangladeshis sent their biggest religious leaders abroad to attend international conferences on family planning. There they discovered that not only the Bangladesh government, but other governments were also worried about the rate at which the population was increasing in their countries. When the religious leaders returned to Bangladesh, they stopped opposing family planning programmes, and advised their followers in the villages and towns to do likewise. This helped immensely, and therefore the population of Bangladesh has been controlled.
Dear Mr CM, you are occupying a very high post in the government. Kindly try to have our top maulanas also sent to Planned Parenthood conferences. You wil1 be pleasantly surprised by the results. Further, force the wheat procurement agencies to put their act together or else face the axe. God bless you.
The writer is a former principal of King Edward Medical College, and president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Pakistan
E-mail: drijaz@nation.com.pk
Showing posts with label punjab. Show all posts
Showing posts with label punjab. Show all posts
Friday, August 15, 2008
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Many tails, many dogs
By Kamran Shafi
LAST week I had written about Laat Sahib Bahadur Punjab, HE Salman Taseer’s diabolical plan to take young Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on a political (long) march through the Punjab when the lad comes home for his August break at Oxford.
I have had fifteen emails, the most I have received for any of my pieces for this newspaper, every single one of them agreeing with my fervent plea to the governor to let the boy be; to let him concentrate on his studies (he is only in his first year at Oxford, for God’s sake); and be as care-free a student as his peers and mates.
To Lahore now. One had read about the Doongi Ground scandal in the papers when Their Lordships Khalilur Rehman Ramday and Raja Fayyaz Mahmood of the Honourable Supreme Court of Pakistan (destroyed by the dictator on Nov 3, 2007) issued a status quo order on April 14, 2006, halting further construction of the proposed IMAX theatre.
I visited Lahore recently and was shocked to see the extent of the ugliness that stared me in the face in place of the ground upon which local children and their friends from elsewhere played cricket. My mind went racing back thirty years when my younger boy Kassem, used to visit his great and good friend Mufti who lived very near the Doongi Ground. Whenever I went to bring my son back from visiting Mufti I used to find that the boys had gone to the ground to play cricket with other neighbourhood children.
Well, all it took was a visit to an IMAX theatre in London (or Berlin — the Punjab government is not sure!) by Pervaiz Elahi, in the company of the then secretary of information and culture and the director general (PR) and bingo! Lahore had to have an IMAX theatre too!
Never mind that there are not many films in the IMAX mode or format in the whole wide world; never mind that the tickets for the IMAX would be beyond the reach of the common citizen — the rich as we well know, have home theatres in their basements costing in some cases crores of rupees, I kid you not.
So what was the cunning plan Elahi’s Punjab government came up with? To add a shopping plaza to the theatre complex, which would pay the running expenses of the theatre. I ask you! Talk of the tail wagging the dog! What a dog! What a tail!
To add insult to injury, the Punjab government changed the ‘use’ of the land through several subterfuges, even paying hundreds of millions in consultancy fees/“compensation” to all manner of people, including the Commando’s favourite theatre producer/director Shah Sharabeel who was reportedly paid Rs4.5m to let go his rights over the Doongi Ground, handed over to him by, you guessed it: the Punjab Horticultural Authority, once headed by Kamran Lashari.
Now where did we hear Shah Sharabeel’s name before, in connection with other lucrative government leases? Remember the other ‘Doongi’ Ground, this time in Islamabad’s F-7 Markaz, that was handed over to this person by the CDA to develop a mini-golf thingy on it; a junk food outlet et al? And who was the chairman CDA when this little transaction happened? Er, none other than self-same Kamran Lashari.
Let us go on, leaving the Sharabeels of this world aside with a reminder that this was the man who had the temerity to actually bad-mouth, on live TV, the then sent on eave/dismissed/removed from office Chief Justice of Pakistan, My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry with not a squeak emanating from the sitting judiciary about the unfair abuse heaped upon their brother. The reason was that on the plea of environmentalists the CJ had dared to stop Sharabeel from ‘developing’ the mini-golf thing.
Back to the Lahore IMAX, however. There is much that needs to be exposed by the Punjab government. It simply must tell the nation the extent of the fraud that went on. It must tell the people why Moonis Elahi, the elder scion of the House of Pervaiz sat in on meetings of the Punjab Entertainment Company (Guarantee) Limited (PECL) formed for the purpose? It must tell us why in the world, serving secretaries to the Government of Punjab sat on the board of PECL? And what it is doing towards making sure that public servants never again have the gall, yes that is the word, to follow apparently and evidently illegal orders? It must tell us too, why the Punjab government (I ask you!) issued cheques for the entire amount to the IMAX company in Canada without any performance guarantee, even without the machinery being shipped (to date!!).
A word about the Frontier tragedy. The situation will soon be out of our hands if we do not stop the madness right now. It is clear that the state of affairs there is well beyond the capabilities of the present set-up. How in the world can the Pakistan Army be expected to normalise a situation which it helped create in the first place?
It has been suggested before by others; let me suggest it again with all the force and persuasion at my command. Make an all-powerful committee of seven good men. Call them the ‘Czars of Peace’ in the Frontier. Let them, who know the Frontier and the tribes and their mannerisms and their mores, be responsible for every facet of the operation: from supervising the political wallahs to ordering military action, to granting monies/compensation, to prioritising development work. They should answer only to the parliament.
The situation is far different from when they were in the field, I know, made different by a quite numbing foolishness on the part of army commanders over the last eight years; made different by our very own agencies: Mangal Bagh, Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Radio did not just fall out of the sky. Still, if anyone can make a difference, these men can.
Surely there are others too, but let me venture to suggest the following: Major General Nasirullah Babar; Mohammad (Lala) Afzal Khan of Swat; Mr Jamil Ahmad CSP, Sahibzada Imtiaz Ahmad CSP, Mr Kunwar Idris CSP, Dr Humayun Khan CSP, and Major General Khurshid Ali Khan. They are sagacious wise men; they have all served in the Frontier; they will know slightly better than nineteen Lt Gen Whatstheirnames.
PS Many in Peshawar say the instant tamasha there is as a sop to the Americans just prior to Boucher’s visit to the Land of the Pure, and Gilani’s to pay homage to Dubya. What a tail; what a dog!
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
LAST week I had written about Laat Sahib Bahadur Punjab, HE Salman Taseer’s diabolical plan to take young Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on a political (long) march through the Punjab when the lad comes home for his August break at Oxford.
I have had fifteen emails, the most I have received for any of my pieces for this newspaper, every single one of them agreeing with my fervent plea to the governor to let the boy be; to let him concentrate on his studies (he is only in his first year at Oxford, for God’s sake); and be as care-free a student as his peers and mates.
To Lahore now. One had read about the Doongi Ground scandal in the papers when Their Lordships Khalilur Rehman Ramday and Raja Fayyaz Mahmood of the Honourable Supreme Court of Pakistan (destroyed by the dictator on Nov 3, 2007) issued a status quo order on April 14, 2006, halting further construction of the proposed IMAX theatre.
I visited Lahore recently and was shocked to see the extent of the ugliness that stared me in the face in place of the ground upon which local children and their friends from elsewhere played cricket. My mind went racing back thirty years when my younger boy Kassem, used to visit his great and good friend Mufti who lived very near the Doongi Ground. Whenever I went to bring my son back from visiting Mufti I used to find that the boys had gone to the ground to play cricket with other neighbourhood children.
Well, all it took was a visit to an IMAX theatre in London (or Berlin — the Punjab government is not sure!) by Pervaiz Elahi, in the company of the then secretary of information and culture and the director general (PR) and bingo! Lahore had to have an IMAX theatre too!
Never mind that there are not many films in the IMAX mode or format in the whole wide world; never mind that the tickets for the IMAX would be beyond the reach of the common citizen — the rich as we well know, have home theatres in their basements costing in some cases crores of rupees, I kid you not.
So what was the cunning plan Elahi’s Punjab government came up with? To add a shopping plaza to the theatre complex, which would pay the running expenses of the theatre. I ask you! Talk of the tail wagging the dog! What a dog! What a tail!
To add insult to injury, the Punjab government changed the ‘use’ of the land through several subterfuges, even paying hundreds of millions in consultancy fees/“compensation” to all manner of people, including the Commando’s favourite theatre producer/director Shah Sharabeel who was reportedly paid Rs4.5m to let go his rights over the Doongi Ground, handed over to him by, you guessed it: the Punjab Horticultural Authority, once headed by Kamran Lashari.
Now where did we hear Shah Sharabeel’s name before, in connection with other lucrative government leases? Remember the other ‘Doongi’ Ground, this time in Islamabad’s F-7 Markaz, that was handed over to this person by the CDA to develop a mini-golf thingy on it; a junk food outlet et al? And who was the chairman CDA when this little transaction happened? Er, none other than self-same Kamran Lashari.
Let us go on, leaving the Sharabeels of this world aside with a reminder that this was the man who had the temerity to actually bad-mouth, on live TV, the then sent on eave/dismissed/removed from office Chief Justice of Pakistan, My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry with not a squeak emanating from the sitting judiciary about the unfair abuse heaped upon their brother. The reason was that on the plea of environmentalists the CJ had dared to stop Sharabeel from ‘developing’ the mini-golf thing.
Back to the Lahore IMAX, however. There is much that needs to be exposed by the Punjab government. It simply must tell the nation the extent of the fraud that went on. It must tell the people why Moonis Elahi, the elder scion of the House of Pervaiz sat in on meetings of the Punjab Entertainment Company (Guarantee) Limited (PECL) formed for the purpose? It must tell us why in the world, serving secretaries to the Government of Punjab sat on the board of PECL? And what it is doing towards making sure that public servants never again have the gall, yes that is the word, to follow apparently and evidently illegal orders? It must tell us too, why the Punjab government (I ask you!) issued cheques for the entire amount to the IMAX company in Canada without any performance guarantee, even without the machinery being shipped (to date!!).
A word about the Frontier tragedy. The situation will soon be out of our hands if we do not stop the madness right now. It is clear that the state of affairs there is well beyond the capabilities of the present set-up. How in the world can the Pakistan Army be expected to normalise a situation which it helped create in the first place?
It has been suggested before by others; let me suggest it again with all the force and persuasion at my command. Make an all-powerful committee of seven good men. Call them the ‘Czars of Peace’ in the Frontier. Let them, who know the Frontier and the tribes and their mannerisms and their mores, be responsible for every facet of the operation: from supervising the political wallahs to ordering military action, to granting monies/compensation, to prioritising development work. They should answer only to the parliament.
The situation is far different from when they were in the field, I know, made different by a quite numbing foolishness on the part of army commanders over the last eight years; made different by our very own agencies: Mangal Bagh, Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Radio did not just fall out of the sky. Still, if anyone can make a difference, these men can.
Surely there are others too, but let me venture to suggest the following: Major General Nasirullah Babar; Mohammad (Lala) Afzal Khan of Swat; Mr Jamil Ahmad CSP, Sahibzada Imtiaz Ahmad CSP, Mr Kunwar Idris CSP, Dr Humayun Khan CSP, and Major General Khurshid Ali Khan. They are sagacious wise men; they have all served in the Frontier; they will know slightly better than nineteen Lt Gen Whatstheirnames.
PS Many in Peshawar say the instant tamasha there is as a sop to the Americans just prior to Boucher’s visit to the Land of the Pure, and Gilani’s to pay homage to Dubya. What a tail; what a dog!
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
‘Khush-hali’, Fatherland style
‘Khush-hali’, Fatherland style
By Kamran Shafi
WE have been regaled by expensive television advertisements for months now telling us what wonders the Punjab government has wrought: first in aid of the Commando’s election for another five-year term in the presidency (which leads one to ask why billions, I kid you not, were spent on the ads when he himself is on record as saying, ‘I will be elected at any cost!’?)
And now for the elevation of the younger scion of the House of Zahoor, Pervaiz Elahi, to prime minister, heaven have mercy (which leads one to ask why billions are being spent when the Commando himself has announced that the next PM will be from the King’s Party?)
Well, I have just returned from a short trip to the once great city of Lahore. Where I did what I always do: walk in the Lawrence Gardens with my young friend Ati; visit Zahid who makes the best puri-bhaji-halva in the world at his lean-to on Beadon Road; and pick up harisa, again the best in the world, from Shafiq ‘Puppa’ who plies his trade as did his grandfather Baba Sadr Din Butt and father Mohammad Ramzan, at ‘Ganda Engine’ in Gawal Mandi.
‘Ganda Engine’, means literally ‘Dirty Engine’, Lahore city’s first and only incinerator built by the Brits but now out of use for 50 years and more. Which is not to say that the area is any the cleaner; you just have to go there to see the state of the inner city.
But before we see Lahore itself, getting there tells you just how much khush-hali stalks the land. The approaches to and off the motorway hit you where it hurts, first off. Whilst we are located in Wah and use either the Brahma-Bahtar or the Burhan interchanges you could be anywhere and have the same experience.
Both our interchanges are approached via the GT Road which, on either side, has been under construction for three years now — all 15 kilometres of it, I kid you not!
The approach road to Bahma-Bahtar was destroyed by rains in February and work has started on its repair only a month ago, forcing us to negotiate potholes the size of our car on the school run to Islamabad the Beautiful five days a week. And this in Attock District, the equivalent if you will, of the Royal County of Berkshire, for our District Nazim may the good Lord bless him, belongs to the Chaudhry clan, Punjab’s present royalty.
But this is Attock — go to Lahore indeed, of which the ‘pride’ is none other than Moonis Elahi s/o Pervaiz Elahi his-self, soon to be elected with heavy mandate to the National Assembly and the Punjab provincial assembly. Get off the motorway and there it is, the ubiquitous pothole and the broken road: Canal Bank; Wahdat Road; the Main Boulevard; the Cantonment; The Mall, you name it and the roads are in a shambles.
A little tour: from the Lawrence Gardens you go to Gawal Mandi via the Montgomery Road where the country’s largest motor-car spare parts market is located and where business and trade worth many hundreds of millions of rupees is conducted every single day. I’ll bet a hundred rupees there is not a dirtier, filthier, uglier sight anywhere in this universe.
From household rubbish in leaking and torn plastic bags, to empty cartons to discarded spare parts to smashed windshields, these last just thrown on to the road to be crushed under the wheels of passing vehicles, you name it and your choice of garbage is there. Prompting you to ask what in heaven’s name is wrong with us? Mark reader, this is Lahore, the capital of the Mother of All Provinces we speak about … what then about the rest of the Punjab? Some khush-hali!
I have already introduced the idea to my readers that ours is a truly unique country; our people a truly unique lot in many more ways than ninety-nine. On Friday last, I went to my bank in Rawalpindi to cash a cheque, and stood waiting my turn at number six in line.
I was number three from the head of the queue when a young lady in her very early twenties sailed right past me and stood next to the second person in line. I cleared my throat deliberately loudly hoping she would notice a man more than her father’s age standing waiting his turn and back off.
No way; she ignored me completely and moved a bit closer to the counter. Just then she was joined by another young woman. Being in a hurry, and having stood in line for nearly 25 minutes, I decided to intervene and asked the teller if it was bank policy to allow women to advance to the head of the queue regardless of how long men had been standing in line?
He mumbled something to the effect that ‘they’ had instructed that women should be served first. ‘Why doesn’t the bank then have a women’s counter?’ I asked. The poor chap had no answer so I let it go. Another five minutes later I finally made it to the head.
As I was counter-signing my cheque I noticed a hand sneak past my right elbow and offer a cheque to the teller. ‘Mein havildar (I did not catch the name) hoon; General Sahib, garhi mein baithay hain,’ said a voice. I turned around and saw a man obviously an army-driver, wearing the namazi topi Ziaul Haq put army soldiers into instead of the smart and elegant karakul cap which was part of the Jawan’s mufti in the good old days.
The long and the short of it is that the havildar was lying, there was no ‘General Sahib’ outside, and when he was told this he smirked: ‘Ghar peh baithay hain.’
The car was a green Mercedes Benz, 90-ish model, registration number RIZ 605. It is now up to the Adjutant General/Provost Marshal to find out whose car it was and take cognisance of the matter in the proper manner.
Bushism of the week: ‘As yesterday’s positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured.’ — President George W. Bush, New York, Sept 26, 2007
P.S. My friend Ati suggests the blurb about khush hali enunciated by Pervaiz Elahi in every ad henceforth be: ‘Har kadam khush hali ki janab – apni!’
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
By Kamran Shafi
WE have been regaled by expensive television advertisements for months now telling us what wonders the Punjab government has wrought: first in aid of the Commando’s election for another five-year term in the presidency (which leads one to ask why billions, I kid you not, were spent on the ads when he himself is on record as saying, ‘I will be elected at any cost!’?)
And now for the elevation of the younger scion of the House of Zahoor, Pervaiz Elahi, to prime minister, heaven have mercy (which leads one to ask why billions are being spent when the Commando himself has announced that the next PM will be from the King’s Party?)
Well, I have just returned from a short trip to the once great city of Lahore. Where I did what I always do: walk in the Lawrence Gardens with my young friend Ati; visit Zahid who makes the best puri-bhaji-halva in the world at his lean-to on Beadon Road; and pick up harisa, again the best in the world, from Shafiq ‘Puppa’ who plies his trade as did his grandfather Baba Sadr Din Butt and father Mohammad Ramzan, at ‘Ganda Engine’ in Gawal Mandi.
‘Ganda Engine’, means literally ‘Dirty Engine’, Lahore city’s first and only incinerator built by the Brits but now out of use for 50 years and more. Which is not to say that the area is any the cleaner; you just have to go there to see the state of the inner city.
But before we see Lahore itself, getting there tells you just how much khush-hali stalks the land. The approaches to and off the motorway hit you where it hurts, first off. Whilst we are located in Wah and use either the Brahma-Bahtar or the Burhan interchanges you could be anywhere and have the same experience.
Both our interchanges are approached via the GT Road which, on either side, has been under construction for three years now — all 15 kilometres of it, I kid you not!
The approach road to Bahma-Bahtar was destroyed by rains in February and work has started on its repair only a month ago, forcing us to negotiate potholes the size of our car on the school run to Islamabad the Beautiful five days a week. And this in Attock District, the equivalent if you will, of the Royal County of Berkshire, for our District Nazim may the good Lord bless him, belongs to the Chaudhry clan, Punjab’s present royalty.
But this is Attock — go to Lahore indeed, of which the ‘pride’ is none other than Moonis Elahi s/o Pervaiz Elahi his-self, soon to be elected with heavy mandate to the National Assembly and the Punjab provincial assembly. Get off the motorway and there it is, the ubiquitous pothole and the broken road: Canal Bank; Wahdat Road; the Main Boulevard; the Cantonment; The Mall, you name it and the roads are in a shambles.
A little tour: from the Lawrence Gardens you go to Gawal Mandi via the Montgomery Road where the country’s largest motor-car spare parts market is located and where business and trade worth many hundreds of millions of rupees is conducted every single day. I’ll bet a hundred rupees there is not a dirtier, filthier, uglier sight anywhere in this universe.
From household rubbish in leaking and torn plastic bags, to empty cartons to discarded spare parts to smashed windshields, these last just thrown on to the road to be crushed under the wheels of passing vehicles, you name it and your choice of garbage is there. Prompting you to ask what in heaven’s name is wrong with us? Mark reader, this is Lahore, the capital of the Mother of All Provinces we speak about … what then about the rest of the Punjab? Some khush-hali!
I have already introduced the idea to my readers that ours is a truly unique country; our people a truly unique lot in many more ways than ninety-nine. On Friday last, I went to my bank in Rawalpindi to cash a cheque, and stood waiting my turn at number six in line.
I was number three from the head of the queue when a young lady in her very early twenties sailed right past me and stood next to the second person in line. I cleared my throat deliberately loudly hoping she would notice a man more than her father’s age standing waiting his turn and back off.
No way; she ignored me completely and moved a bit closer to the counter. Just then she was joined by another young woman. Being in a hurry, and having stood in line for nearly 25 minutes, I decided to intervene and asked the teller if it was bank policy to allow women to advance to the head of the queue regardless of how long men had been standing in line?
He mumbled something to the effect that ‘they’ had instructed that women should be served first. ‘Why doesn’t the bank then have a women’s counter?’ I asked. The poor chap had no answer so I let it go. Another five minutes later I finally made it to the head.
As I was counter-signing my cheque I noticed a hand sneak past my right elbow and offer a cheque to the teller. ‘Mein havildar (I did not catch the name) hoon; General Sahib, garhi mein baithay hain,’ said a voice. I turned around and saw a man obviously an army-driver, wearing the namazi topi Ziaul Haq put army soldiers into instead of the smart and elegant karakul cap which was part of the Jawan’s mufti in the good old days.
The long and the short of it is that the havildar was lying, there was no ‘General Sahib’ outside, and when he was told this he smirked: ‘Ghar peh baithay hain.’
The car was a green Mercedes Benz, 90-ish model, registration number RIZ 605. It is now up to the Adjutant General/Provost Marshal to find out whose car it was and take cognisance of the matter in the proper manner.
Bushism of the week: ‘As yesterday’s positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured.’ — President George W. Bush, New York, Sept 26, 2007
P.S. My friend Ati suggests the blurb about khush hali enunciated by Pervaiz Elahi in every ad henceforth be: ‘Har kadam khush hali ki janab – apni!’
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
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