Some good, some bad, period
May 12, 2001
Two quite important news, one that hit the headlines one that did not, are exercising the minds and the hearts of the people of our country. The one that hit the headlines is the cancellation of the Islamabad-Peshawar motorway contract with the Turkish firm Bayindir, and the one that did not, is the back-pedalling of the War Pensions Agency of the United Kingdom regarding the payment of a one-off ex-gratia payment of Pounds Sterling 10,000 to "All ex-prisoners of the Japanese during the Second World War."
First things first then, and specially since Turkey is such an excellent friend of Pakistan's, it is but natural that people would question the cancellation of a large contract awarded by a Pakistani government agency to a Turkish company. On the face of it, and only exercising ones heart, it does seem wrong to deal in this harsh manner with a Turkish firm. But, just as all Pakistani (or Canadian or American or French or Japanese, for that matter) businesses cannot be good, so all Turkish firms cannot be good either. There is also something called national self-interest. The more I thought about this matter, specially in view of what has appeared in the press: the impact of this cancellation on our relations with Turkey, the more convinced I became that there must be more to this whole sorry story than met the eye. So, I began to sniff about. Because I live in an area through which the motorway runs, a rural area where people interact with one another a lot more than city folk, I personally know a whole lot of what are best described as 'little people'--farmers who own tractor-trolleys for example--who were also involved with Bayindir's operations at the lowest level--carting building materials, for example.
First off, it is an open secret that Bayindir received rather special treatment from Nawaz Sharif in terms of rates and so on. Even village folk know that the company was raking in profits at a margin of 130 to 160 percent! In lay terms, this poor country was mostly paying something like 270 Rupees for work worth 100 Rupees. Sometimes Bayindir made a profit of 1000 percent, I am told! Despite this huge profit margin, the company is criticised by sub-contractors for squeezing them whenever the opportunity presented itself. It is reported to have used the economic slowdown in Pakistan to its own benefit and to the detriment of its Pakistani sub-contractors whenever it could. For example, an Hitachi EX-200 Excavator hired for Rs 180,000 per month (or 260 hours i.e., 10 working hours a day) on the motorway project in July 1998, was hired by the company for Rs 90,000 or thereabouts in January 2001 because more machines became available in the market! The proponents of the capitalist system would probably clap their hands in glee, but this was hardly a friendly act; hardly a good way in which to deal with your sub-contractors who all belonged to the host country. Specially when most of the plant and equipment belonged to the sub-contractors. Specially when the company was making windfall profits.
I was told that Bayindir, to take another example, were bad paymasters to boot. That amounts received by them from NHA in clearance of bills (every 75 days) for work done 60 days ago, were immediately sent to their accounts abroad, instead of some funds being retained within Pakistan to clear the next month's bills of the sub-contractors. Which is the practice of other foreign construction firms with good reputations, such as the Japanese firm Taisei which is involved in the Kohat tunnel project and two Turkish companies too, STFA and Tekser, which are known to have done good work on several large projects in this country. Indeed, Tekser, which is at present working on the Ghazi Barotha Power project, completed their Chashma Canal Project eight months ahead of schedule. Bayindir, on the other hand, evidently was way behind on its contract. According to reports the firm had a schedule slippage of between 25 and 32 percent, progressively getting worse.
Be that as it may, I was still much disturbed at the whispering campaign put out about Pakistan's relations with Turkey taking a beating because of this deal going sour. So, bless the Internet, I got on to what the Turkish press was saying about the matter. I got hold of two items, one a story in the Turkish Daily News, headlined "Turkish firms see Pakistani deals unaffected after Bayindir failure", and the other from the Daily Hurriyet which said that Pakistan, after taking over Bayindir's project had offered a 200 million US Dollar project to Tekser which "was happy news for Turkey, which is now in the grip of a severe economic crisis." So much for the doomsayer's doom-saying.
More than everything else, we should be grateful that there are people in this country who have the guts to take difficult decisions in the national interest. Indeed, the government has bent over backwards trying to explain that the cancellation of the contract is in Pakistan's interest. Which, to my mind, it is. I can only say that it would be good if the NHA can encash whatever guarantees that the company had to give, in what is widely seen as an unequal contract agreed to by a corrupt (read Nawaz Sharif And Co.,) government. And that after writing off it's own charge, that it will have enough left over to pay the hapless Pakistani sub-contractors who were so badly used by Bayindir.
And now for the ex-gratia payment of 10,000 Pounds Sterling "To all ex-prisoners of the Japanese during the Second World War" on which the British government has taken such a shameful U-turn. The British Commonwealth Ex-services League, 48 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5JG, announced in a letter dated November 20th, 2000 and addressed to All Member Organisations, that "the British government had announced (on November 7th, 2000) that an ex-gratia payment of Pounds Sterling 10,000 would be paid to the surviving members of those ex-servicemen and women who served the Crown (please note the capital C!) who (sic) were held prisoner by the Japanese during the Second World War. In cases where an entitled serviceman or woman has died, the surviving spouse will be entitled to receive the payment provided that they were still married on or before 7 November 2000." The letter goes on to advise that claims etc., should be sent to the War Pensions Agency (WPA) at so and so place which has a helpline, fax, website and so on and so forth.
So far so good. The news was circulated in the villages from whence came the young men who gave their all for the 'Crown'; those ex-soldiers (old men now, all upwards of 70 years) of the Indian Army, read soldiers who served the 'Crown', and who saw Japanese savagery up close were delighted that their sacrifices for the 'Crown' were being acknowledged at long last; those widows whose husbands had told them the stories of the pain and the agony of their years in war and as Japanese POWs felt that the 'Crown' was, at long last, going to pay its dues to the memory of their loved ones. The ex-servicemen's organisations began to draw up immaculate lists of those soldiers who had been prisoners of the Japanese. Because I myself am an ex-soldier, and live in a so-called British-anointed 'Martial Area', I know of instances where several widows of known Japanese prisoners were not certified as such because the Regimental Records attesting that were not available.
But no. Just as soon as the WPA began to receive claims from the ex-servicemen/widows from Pakistan, this is what the WPA Chief Executive, Gordon Hextall, wrote to one of the widows: "Dear Madam" he starts(!), and goes on to say, variously: "There has been some mis-reporting of the details of this scheme and as a result, some confusion has arisen as to who qualifies for the above payment." The cat is let out of the bag immediately: "The payment is aimed at members of the British Groups who were held captive by the Japanese." British Groups? What in heavens name are "British Groups", dash it all? If the Indian Army, of the British Empire, servants of the 'Crown', many of whom gave their lives, too many of whom were horribly maimed were not "British Groups" then what were they? French Groups? And what about British officers who served with Indian Army regiments? The cat comes out again, roaring this time: "Europeans serving with the Indian Army or Burmese Armed Forces" qualify!! "Europeans"? Of course, what the WPA means is "Brits"! Shame.
Shame again, I say. And I am a great believer in British Justice and British Fairplay. I am one of those who still says that a Mirpuri from Azad Kashmir is a more equal citizen of any of the sorry townships of Middle England, than he is of Mirpur, Azad Kashmir. More than anything else, I am a friend of the Labour Party. I am, therefore, stunned to find that according to the British Government, the blood flowing in a white man's veins is more precious than the blood flowing in a brown man's veins.
The author is a retired army officer and a freelance columnist