An open letter to Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari
Dear Bilawal,
First things first. First of all congratulations for formally launching your campaign to becoming active as chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party. This is a seminal moment in the party’s never boring, always noisy, usually turbulent and often tragic evolution. Because the party seems ready to turn a new leaf, even if reluctantly. 

Canal politics
Farmers at the tail-end of Badin are denied access to water as influentials use far more than their share
By Aoun Sahi

At a time of the year when Qazi Faizullah would like to prepare his land for wheat crop, he sits on the greenbelt outside the Islamabad press club along with dozens of other farmers from his area — protesting against the non-availability of irrigation water for their land in Badin, Sindh. 

Yeh Woh
Love shove
By Masud Alam
It is incredible how much time, effort and passion we put into thinking, talking, hearing and seeing ‘love’ and not getting any. We keep filling our minds with the idea of love, all our lives, without actually loving, or being loved. Eric Fromm, psychologist, social scientist and the author of ‘The Art of Loving’ explains this riddle thus: ‘There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations and yet, which fails as regularly, as love. 

scandal
Double standards
The case of Irfan Qadir, the British-Pakistani banker, is a classic example of how media and the blue-chip companies via private investigators treat their targets and lay into them, mercilessly
By Murtaza Ali Shah

Irfan Qadir is a top British Pakistani banker who at one stage was hailed by the Financial Times and other mainstream UK papers as a leading star of the banking sector in Britain. He was also regarded as one of the top 50 most powerful Asians in the UK, a recipient of the Finance Excellence award and the House of Lords Asian Guild award. 

Vicious circle
The government needs to revamp the current legislative setup to address the issues of poverty, literacy and child labour
By Rasheed Ali
Muhammad Asim works as a shop-cleaning boy at a cloth shop at Chowk Yateem Khana Market, Lahore. He will turn 13 this December, and has been working in the same shop for the last three years. He is the fourth of six siblings. 

Extraordinary law
The recently promulgated Protection of Pakistan Ordinance 2013, aims to regulate conflict, not peace as in the case of other counterterrorism laws
By Waqar Gillani

An Ordinance to provide for protection against waging of war against Pakistan and the prevention of acts threatening the security of Pakistan was promulgated all of a sudden by the newly-elected president of the country, last week. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An open letter to Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari

First things first. First of all congratulations for formally launching your campaign to becoming active as chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party. This is a seminal moment in the party’s never boring, always noisy, usually turbulent and often tragic evolution. Because the party seems ready to turn a new leaf, even if reluctantly.

It’s also poignant for you personally as you commit yourself to a life of rigmarole and rough-and-tumble that takes courage to embrace in Pakistan’s chequered polity.

Working at the helm of the PPP means opening oneself to the risk of some of the worst political and social dangers one can face in Pakistan – heartbreak, defeat, intimidation, physical attacks and even death. Your grandfather, grandmother, mother and father faced most or all of these in the line of duty as the supreme leaders of the PPP.

Surely this must have weighed heavy on your mind as you convinced yourself destined to a public life without certainties.

The tone and tenor of your speech last week aside, the fact that you chose to launch yourself lock, stock and barrel out into the streets, stepping out of the false comforts of Bilawal House’s drawing room, the occasion was pregnant with so much symbolism. For the first time in two decades the party not only knows where it stands, its work is cut out for it, and hence yours as well.

For the 2008 elections, as the country transitioned from Musharraf’s Faustian rule to a representative dispensation, Benazir Bhutto led PPP into choppy waters, paid a price no one should have to do. For this ultimate sacrifice even her detractors deservedly call her a Shaheed now. For the young, death is a distant irritant but for someone who saw live on television his mother being shot to death, it is understandable that you don’t take an awami life lightly. Thanks to Benazir but in her absence, the party won a comprehensive mandate unprecedented since its first ride into power in the 1970s.

However, over the next five turbulent years as the ruling party, the PPP failed on key fronts despite some remarkable achievements and contributions, including sanitising the Constitution, empowering the provinces and facilitating a smooth transfer of power. These are bigger milestones than they’re given credit for.

The party’s biggest failures – despite the admittedly tough conditions and obstacles – were not being able to energise the economy, tackle terrorism and manage some good governance. And, of course, failing to come back to power. From the country’s biggest party PPP has effectively reduced itself to running the show in ‘mere’ Sindh. It lost the confidence of a staggering 7m voters between the 2008 and 2013 elections – intriguingly the same margin of votes that Imran Khan’s PTI has bagged. This was the worst PPP electoral performance in 40 years except for the 1997 elections.

But all that is over. No more excuses, no more posturing and no more self-deception. The party can continue clinging to the status quo of tight-fisted, non-democratic in-house management style that has seen some of the best politicians the country knows sidelined for the last six years and be content with lording aimlessly over Sindh. Or it can reinvent itself and make itself relevant for a changing Pakistan.

It was good to see you setting both a goal and a timeline. Elections 2018, you declared. That’s good but you did not spell out a mission. All parties aim to win power in elections. So just in themselves what good are a goal and a timeline? Surely a party’s work doesn’t stop at winning elections. What’s the longer-term mission of PPP, and how will it be defined in the rapidly changing, increasingly cynical and eminently exhausted Pakistan, is what I as a voter would like to know.

Sure, there’s no party more experienced than PPP – it has won five of the eight general elections held. It has won and lost both elections and leaders, the triumphs and tribulations – the works. But surely it is not the font of all wisdom.

So why cling to an old hodge-podge ideology of socialism, Islam and the market as the party tenaciously trundled through the 80s, 90s and the 00s but arguably sacrificing adaptability and reinvention in favour of survival?

If you want to just lead the party as the latest Bhutto occupying the hot seat, it’s already yours – you don’t have to work for it. In fact it just fell in your lap 5 years ago although admittedly not because you wanted it but, like your mother and father before you, it was forced upon you by cruel happenstance. If you also want to lead the people and the country then I’m afraid your pedigree alone won’t get you far. This leadership and the trust that it runs on you’ll have to earn.

Politics is about keeping hopes and dreams alive and adding value to people’s lives. After four decades of trying out different kinds of democracies, autocracies and theocracies – all resulting in more or less the same outcomes – the people are fed up. All these ideologies and isms have failed to improve governance, run the economy well and bring long-term stability. Roti, kapra aur makan? Four decades after your grandfather promised them, a big chunk of your potential voters don’t have it or those of other parties.

What people are looking for are not the politics of Right, Left and Centre but simply that a new compact between the state and the citizens puts the latter at the centre of the former’s service.

So, in a country growing weary of politics that doesn’t deliver not just roti, kapra aur makan but neither sehat, taleem aur dukan, what do you, dear Bilawal, have that can harken us to the ballot boxes to beef up your leadership? Will you, in a departure from how the party was run in your name over the past five years, change tack by admitting that PPP needs to engage with and induct representatives of the professional classes, the intelligentsia and civil society to both get a pulse on what the people are thinking and what they want?

You and the party you lead can get votes but how can you – and all the parties out there — make policies and run the country without inducting in your ranks real people who are not merely waderas and karobaris? Imran Khan has taken away all the youth and the women, Nawaz Sharif all the businessmen, MQM all the berozgar (by giving them party rozgars), the religious parties all the moulvis.

Do you think PPP can make do with just kisans and haris and waderas and the also-rans from other parties? PPP is supposed to reflect the multifarious political, religious, ethnic, linguistic, sectarian, social and class pluralisms of Pakistan that other parties have stolen away from the PPP.

Have you wondered how did it lose them along the way?

Dear Bilawal, the biggest mistake you will make is thinking PPP is your party. But it’s not. It’s the people’s and they will make it or break it, just like they’ve always done.

There are five years to elections but five lifetimes before that in getting your mission sorted out, earning your stripes, rekindling people’s shattered trust in politics that work their favour and readying for Elections 2018. If you won’t do it without us, you won’t get far. Good luck!

Best regards,

Adnan Rehmat

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Canal politics
Farmers at the tail-end of Badin are denied access to water as influentials use far more than their share
By Aoun Sahi

At a time of the year when Qazi Faizullah would like to prepare his land for wheat crop, he sits on the greenbelt outside the Islamabad press club along with dozens of other farmers from his area — protesting against the non-availability of irrigation water for their land in Badin, Sindh.

“I could only cultivate 64 acres of land last season. I chopped off mango trees spread across 100 acres of land last year because of unavailability of irrigation water. Ground water in our area is saline,” says Faizullah, who owns 900 acres of land in Badin district of Sindh province.

The shortage of water is mainly because of unequal distribution of canal water in Sindh where big and powerful landlords use the water share of farmers belonging to the tail-end of Badin district, situated at the tail-end of Rohri canal system.

“The situation has become worse in the last five years as hundreds of powerful people in our area are ‘gifted’ with direct outlets (DOs) from canals to irrigate their lands. DO is like giving road access to a single home from the motorway,” he says.

Badin is one of the most water scarce districts of the country, where farmers are allowed to cultivate only 28 per cent of their land in kharif (summer) season and 56 per cent in rabbi (winter) season. Cultivation of high water consuming crops like rice and sugarcane are not allowed in the district but “influentials” of the area, according to Faizullah, have been violating both the rules. “They have not only been cultivating 100 per cent of their land but banned crops as well,” he tells TNS, showing pictures of rice and sugarcane crops which he claims are taken from his area.

Fayyaz Hussain Shah, another farmer from the area who owns 430 acres of land, says he could cultivate 1.5 acre only in the last season. “I could not pay tuition fee of my children. Several people in the area either have sold their land to influentials in the area or have given it on lease with the promise to get it back after 10 years with a direct water outlet,” he says, adding more than 90,000 acres of land and over 200 villages (over 80,000 people) have been badly affected due to the DOs.

“Ten branches of Naseer Canal which consist of 164 water courses to irrigate 98,563 acres are worst hit. Many people in the area have migrated to other areas due to shortage of water,” he says, holding corrupt officials of the Irrigation Department responsible for the mess — “CM Sindh Qaim Ali Shah allowed 15 new DOs on Naseer Branch in the last five years. Now there are 64 DOs on the same branch. Further, he adds, de-silting of Rohri Canal and Naseer Branch has not been done for many years.

Hussain’s assertion is substantiated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) report in 2010 on Sindh water resources. Prepared by Roger A. Collier, a water resources economist and independent consultant, the report states DOs are against the law and provide the owners more than the sanctioned water.

“The 107 DOs surveyed showed that the water taken in total was 382 per cent more than the sanctioned discharge. In extreme case one DO was taking over 30 times its design discharge and the average DO takes more than 5 times its sanctioned discharge,” it reads.

The ADB report lists as many as 147 landlords who benefit from DOs only in Naseer Division of Rohri Canal, including Asif Zardari and Nisar Khuhro.

“DO farmers have abundant water at zero marginal cost. DO and illegal outlets is not only inequitable but also economically damaging as water is transferred from uses with returns over Rs 6.0/m3 to uses with returns of Rs 2.2/m3 to 3.7/m3”, it reads.

The report points out that DO of Mir Muhammad Ali Talpur has been taking 10.146 cusec water instead of designed discharge of 2.27 cusec while Asif Ali Zardari’s DO has been taking 17.88 cusec water instead of originally allowed to get 12.93 cusec water (the largest DO on Naseer Canal).

“It has changed the cropping patterns on large landholdings to higher water demand crops with lower economic returns to water (but higher financial returns on land),” states the report.

Professor Ejaz Qureshi, ex-General Manager of Sindh Irrigation Development Authority (SIDA) and an irrigation water expert from Hyderabad, says the report is based on facts. “The situation in Badin for poor farmers is bad. You would be surprised to know that they cultivate 100 per cent of their lands. In Badin, they have made huge fish ponds which use canal water through these DOs or water theft from the canals,” he says.

Irrigation officials of the province are aware of the issue but pose to be helpless. “Only a CM can issue orders for a DO. He can approve the DO wherever he wants in the province. Those who have been getting these DOs are influential, we cannot do anything,” says Muhammad Aslam Ansari, Additional Secretary Technical of Sindh Irrigation and Power Department.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeh Woh
Love shove
By Masud Alam

It is incredible how much time, effort and passion we put into thinking, talking, hearing and seeing ‘love’ and not getting any. We keep filling our minds with the idea of love, all our lives, without actually loving, or being loved. Eric Fromm, psychologist, social scientist and the author of ‘The Art of Loving’ explains this riddle thus: ‘There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations and yet, which fails as regularly, as love.

‘If this were the case with any other activity, people would be eager to know the reasons for the failure, and to learn how one could do better, or they would give up the activity.’

Aah! But how can you give up this activity that has been lighting up your lamps of hope for half your life and giving you pleasure in your last half like an old and dear wound that scabs but never heals. We may as well continue to fail at love but no, we cannot give up the passive pleasures and pains of a love that only lives in our body, our thoughts. Never gets us anywhere, but that’s how it is; we’ll shrug, we’ll drug, we’ll weep and we’ll kill but we won’t examine the possibility of love being an ‘active’ pursuit; something that can be learned and practised and improved upon.

There are two popular ways we are conditioned to view love. One is the doomed view of love as a sickness and an essential ingredient of pain — a sickness and a pain though that makes the lovers poets, artists, writers et al and gives them the licence to have enough alcohol to drown all their sorrows in. This type is best described in Pankaj Udhas’ ghazals and Neil Gaiman’s writings: ‘You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness …’

The other is the happy channel. Love is Margallas in the late afternoon, maple leaves in autumn, warm sunshine in winters, a burst of mint and lemon in summer. Love will make you happy, love will complete you, and love will sort you out for life. This is the kind of romantic love beautiful women and handsome men in Hollywood and Bollywood play at. It’s usually love at first sight or a series of coincidences and events that direct and drive the affair of love to fruition. We devour fictionalised love packaged in film, drama, music, literature, painting, gossip … and that’s all the love in our lives.

Both channels have limited scope of success as both rely on the principle so well articulated in this song that it should be regarded as the lover’s anthem: Pyar kia nahin jaata ho jaata hai, Love is not something to do, it is something that is done to you, by a super natural power, a god, fate, coincidence, a random act … love is anything but something to work towards.

Erich Fromm puts his reputation as an academician and practitioner of psychology at stake by arguing that love is indeed something to work towards. The Art of Loving is a pocket-sized 112 page book that challenges the prevailing myths (that haven’t changed in more than half a century that has elapsed since it was first published), discusses the evolutionary influences on how we view love, prescribes ‘things’ to practice and motivates the reader to make the effort.

As motivational books go, this one is too dry, to-the-point, and coldly rational to be a bestseller for years that it has been, and is still in print. If nothing else the millions of copies sold all over the world is a testament of the pull the subject of ‘love’ has on human beings. Pyar k liye, they’ll kuch bhi karey ga. It’s a book you’d want to read even if you haven’t opened a book since high school. But as the author clarifies in the first few pages, there is no point in reading it if you believe love to be a thing that ‘happens’ by itself.

This book is useful only for those who believe in making things happen. Love is one of those things.

masudalam@yahoo.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

scandal
Double standards
The case of Irfan Qadir, the British-Pakistani banker, is a classic example of how media and the blue-chip companies via private investigators treat their targets and lay into them, mercilessly
By Murtaza Ali Shah

Irfan Qadir is a top British Pakistani banker who at one stage was hailed by the Financial Times and other mainstream UK papers as a leading star of the banking sector in Britain. He was also regarded as one of the top 50 most powerful Asians in the UK, a recipient of the Finance Excellence award and the House of Lords Asian Guild award.

But things changed dramatically for Irfan Qadir in 2011 after he became a whistle-blower and raised his head above the pulpit to expose corruption at the heart of the banking industry.

He ended up paying a heavy price, was hounded and victimised but has emerged victorious, defying all odds. His case in Britain has become a classic example of how media and the blue-chip companies treat their targets via private investigators and lay into them mercilessly.

It appears that the reality of media in a country where the media has a suave image is not different from what it is in countries such as Pakistan where private details of citizens are routinely leaked to public.

After a successful 20 years in banking, the events of 2011 turned Qadir’s world upside down after he became a whistle-blower. Qadir made allegations against UK Chancellor George Osborne regarding Bank of Ireland’s alleged exploitation of £10billion of deposits from more than 2 million customers of the post office. Various attacks were made on his credibility and there were attempts to silence him but the Pakistani banker refused to budge.

Qadir’s employer Bank of Ireland instructed a top UK law firm, Mishcon de Reya, which in turn instructed Diligence, private investigators, with the task of digging Qadir’s private details to counter him.

It is pertinent to mention here that after the News of the World shut down amidst allegations of ‘phone hacking’ by journalists and corrupt private investigators, the UK government ordered the ‘Leveson Inquiry’. The inquiry, amongst other things, looked at the use of corrupt private investigators by the UK press.

Several months after the inquiry concluded, it was revealed there was a new larger scandal nicknamed ‘Blue-Chip Hacking’. This involved the use of corrupt private investigators by ‘Blue-Chip’ (listed on the stock exchange) companies and potentially accounted for as much as 80 per cent of private investigators’ instructions.

UK based Daily Mail reported Mishcon de Reya as the “biggest meanest sons of bit**es who walk the legal landscape,” claiming they fought so dirty, it took one’s breath away. The UK press also reported Mishcon de Reya as a law firm who openly admit to use of private investigators. This included previous dealings with private investigation firm Caratu, whose investigator was jailed for using illegal methods, and private investigation firm RISC, whose chief executive is currently on bail having been arrested on suspicion of bribing police officers.

The private investigators who went all out on Qadir were Diligence who also have a record of illegal activity and have been caught and prosecuted for infiltrating the systems of accounting giants, KPMG.

Diligence was formed by former members of the CIA and MI5. Their chairperson is the former UK Home Secretary Michael Howard MP and the current UK CEO is a former MI5 agent, Nick Day, who is also an adviser to the BBC ’Spooks’ drama series in which many high tech surveillance techniques are displayed. Nick Day has been quoted as saying “a spy thinks the same way as a criminal” and that “spying is professional blagging”.

As part of the strategy to discredit Qadir, Diligence’s Alex Blair, a former Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) police officer, planted a false story in a leading UK newspaper, the Mail on Sunday that published defamatory allegations against Qadir. These allegations were later proven to be untrue; the newspaper subsequently admitted to their falsehood, paid substantial damages to Qadir, and issued a public apology. A lawsuit is estimated to have cost the Mail on Sunday owners, Associated Press Ltd, £750,000.

Qadir, whilst still an employee of the Bank of Ireland, made an application to the UK courts for whistle blowing protection. At a pre-hearing review in November 2011, he accused the Bank of Ireland of employing Diligence to put him under surveillance.

It would be no surprise if the surveillance on Qadir by Diligence involved phone hacking and computer hacking or that “professional blagging” had taken place to get confidential information on Qadir. And in only what can be described as an act of desperation, Diligence resorted to the oldest spy trick by trespassing onto Qadir’s property to steal rubbish from his bins. Qadir was vigilant enough to catch them in the act and reported the illegal acts to the police.

The News on Sunday has been told by a credible source that the intimidation also involved Qadir allegedly being warned not to attend a separate trial involving a Bank of Ireland colleague where Mishcon de Reya were also acting. And in a further alleged act of intimidation, in the same trial, Mishcon de Reya divulged sensitive information regarding Qadir’s dependents. Both of these serious acts of intimidation, this reporter understands, were reported to the trial judge.

It has been reported that eventually the Bank of Ireland entered into an out of court settlement with Qadir — a settlement which is rumoured to be in millions.

In relation to similar conduct of Mishcon de Reya, it has been alleged that they may have had a role to play in funding other private investigators whose undeclared practices may have included blagging and privacy data infringing.

TNS has been told by a credible source who has had access to various witness statements in a separate case, again involving Bank of Ireland, that Mishcon de Reya employed a private investigator named Micheal O’Leary of Forensic Pathways. Allegations are made that O’Leary had blagged — made false representations on behalf of Mishcon de Reya to Southwark Crown Court in order to obtain confidential information.

Our source advises us that in his witness statement, O’Leary admits to obtaining the information but denies he had blagged in order to do so. In fact O’Leary states that he was acting on information given to him by “Mishcon de Reya who had received it from HMP Wandsworth”. Given that the information would have been governed by data protection, it is not surprising that a further allegation in a witness statement is that Gary Miller or someone else in Mishcon de Reya must have bribed someone in the police for the information — an allegation which Gary Miller in his own witness statement states as ludicrous and false.

This month the UK Information Commissioners’ Office announced that law firms and financial organisations are to be probed for unlawfully obtaining personal information and breaches of the ‘Data Protection Act’ and the newly formed NCA (National Crime Agency — dubbed Britain’s FBI) has now been given the task to investigate.

The UK’s blue-chip companies are violating ethics in an even more shameless manner than Pakistan’s companies. In Pakistan, information is not properly protected and has a price tag. In the UK, persons holding positions of trust — i.e. police, intelligence officers etc. — have a duty by law to protect confidential data.

However, we now know that upon leaving their service, these very same people are employed by private investigation firms to obtain confidential information they were once paid to protect.

The reputation of the UK being a fair playing field of law abiding organisations is in question and the findings in the coming months will be viewed with interest worldwide.

The writer reports for GEO TV and Jang Group of Newspapers from London. He tweets at:@MurtazaGeoNews

 

 

 

 

Vicious circle
The government needs to revamp the current legislative setup to address the issues of poverty, literacy and child labour
By Rasheed Ali

Muhammad Asim works as a shop-cleaning boy at a cloth shop at Chowk Yateem Khana Market, Lahore. He will turn 13 this December, and has been working in the same shop for the last three years. He is the fourth of six siblings.

His two elder brothers are also working: the eldest works at a motorcycle repair workshop and the younger helps his father to run a roadside chhabari (makeshift) hotel in an industrial area. Only his elder sister, who is number three among the siblings, and his two younger brothers go to school. However, keeping with the family tradition, these two boys will also be withdrawn from their school and sent to some shop as soon as they reach 10 or 11 years of age.

His father, Muhammad Anwar Khwaja, firmly believes education is a ‘luxury’ that can be enjoyed only by the wealthy people. The poor can only think about making a living from the beginning, he says. That’s why he never sent his eldest son to school and attached him to a motorcycle mechanic in his locality when he was only six years old. And he has no regrets at all, because now this 17-year-old boy brings home more than five thousands rupees every month.

“Had I made the mistake of sending him to school, I would have been spending my hard-earned money on his education until now,” he says bluntly. “And who can guarantee a job even if my son passes the 12th class examination,” he asks.

Anwar Khwaja is also happy with the performance of his second son. “I cannot run my ‘hotel’ alone. And, by the way, there should be someone who would take over my business when I get older,” he says. “We both make four to five hundred rupees daily from this business. What can education give to me and my sons?”

However, he has a different viewpoint about the education of his daughter. He wants her to get educated to the highest level as “she will have to go to another family and she must be equipped enough to do a better job if the need arises at any stage in her life.”

But there is no change of mind regarding the education of his younger sons. He will stop them from going to school in two or three years and put them in some shop or a workshop to make them earning hands, at the earliest.

Anwar is not the sole example of his kind. There are hundreds of thousands of such parents who do not want to send their children to schools and want them to start earning money as early as possible.

A campaign, ‘Zara Sochiye’ (Just Think), being run currently by Jang Group’s Geo News television channel for promotion of education in the country, reveals that 2.5 crore (25 million) children in Pakistan do not go to school, though education is free in the public sector schools and students are provided all books free of cost.

The campaign with an attractive slogan ‘Agar Aagey Barhna Hay To Alif Bay Pay Yaqeen Rakhna Hay’ (If you want to make progress, you will have to make education a priority) further discloses that 1.2 crore (12 million) of the out-of-school children work as labourers or domestic workers.

Data collected by various private organisations also attest to these facts. The Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child recently published a report noting that Pakistan has the world’s second-largest number of children out of school.

The report discloses that there are at least 12 million child labourers in Pakistan — a country amongst the list of 46 nations that do not have effective legislation to protect children from hazardous work, despite being a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Findings of the organisations, working for children’s rights the world over, show that child labour mostly stems from poverty. Which is why, as per estimates, of the 215 million child labourers around the globe, approximately 114 million (53 per cent) are in Asia-Pacific, 14 million (7 per cent) in Latin America, and 65 million (30 per cent) in Sub-Saharan Africa.

As far as Pakistan is concerned, at least 60 to 70 per cent population live below the poverty line. The economic conditions force people to send their children to work to make ends meet. This means that as long as the reasons for making children work exist, the issues of compulsory education and child labour cannot be resolved. In such a situation, the viewpoint of Muhammad Anwar Khwaja appears rational.

Employment of children in work activities, ranging from light to hazardous forms of labour, exists in a number of sectors with varying degrees of prevalence. According to the Federal Bureau of Statistics estimates, about 3.8 million children between 5-14 are involved in economic activities — both in the formal and informal sectors, including factories, auto-workshops, hotels and roadside eateries, shops, football industry, printing industry, and agriculture, not to speak of beggary.

In rural areas of the country, about half of school-age girls do not go to schools. The statistics show that 50 per cent of these economically active children are in the age group of 5 to 9 years. Out of them, 2.7 million are claimed to be working in the agricultural sector.

There is a dire need for the incumbent government to revamp the current legislative setup to address the issues of poverty, literacy and child labour in the light of various international commitments, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and ILO Conventions 138 and 182, related to minimum age of employment and worst forms of child labour. It should be noted with concern that the Employment of Children Act 1991 is not being enforced comprehensively, owing to an inadequate administrative structure.

Though no concrete data on child labour is available in the country, we must recognise that behind each number there is the face of a child. Until and unless reasons for poverty are not removed, parents are not convinced of the importance of education, and students are not provided with safe, accessible and high quality education opportunities, the problems of illiteracy and child labour cannot be solved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Extraordinary law
The recently promulgated Protection of Pakistan Ordinance 2013, aims to regulate conflict, not peace as in the case of other counterterrorism laws
By Waqar Gillani

An Ordinance to provide for protection against waging of war against Pakistan and the prevention of acts threatening the security of Pakistan was promulgated all of a sudden by the newly-elected president of the country, last week.

The law is well-timed; right when the PM was off to the US, where he was supposed to highlight his government’s legal commitments to terrorism.

However, the law contradicts with the PML-N’s political thought and the election manifesto that disowns the ‘war on terror’, believing the US has unnecessarily dragged Pakistan into it.

The Protection of Pakistan Ordinance 2013 (PPO) issued by the Presidency states that the “writ of the state shall be restored with full might; those to pursue terror and fear, regardless of nationality, colour, creed or religion, shall be treated as enemy and dealt with strictly without any compunction”.

It adds the state will not allow Afghan immigrants or other foreign nationals to be used for terrorism purposes.

Also, the Ordinance says, Special Federal Courts will be designated to render speedy justice and joint investigation teams of security agencies and police will be constituted to investigate all heinous crimes committed in areas where civil armed forces are invited to aid civil power.

The PPO 2013 deals with “enemy aliens” engaged in waging a war against Pakistan, who will face unlimited detention, unlike Pakistani nationals who can be held in custody for a maximum of 90 days.

This concept of “enemy aliens” is worth discussing in the parliament, says former caretaker law minister of Pakistan and lawyer Ahmer Bilal Soofi. “It is not a draconian law and it cannot be implemented without a specific notification by the federal government,” he says, adding, “There are laws in Pakistan relating to peace but this is a law which aims to regulate conflict with the basic prerequisite that it will not be used in normal situation.”

Legally, he maintains, “this law seems like a good additional tool available with the government to use in extraordinary situation. At least, its preamble admits a war-like situation in the country, a situation which the government seems hesitant to admit.”

For Soofi, it is a switch-off, switch-on law, and has been drafted hurriedly.

The PPO 2013 is the second addition to the list of anti-terrorism laws, the first was the Anti-terrorism Amendment Ordinance that proposes longer detention of suspects and accepts electronic evidences as well as trials by video links. These amendments add new witness protection measures and instruct provincial governments to ensure prisoners do not have access to mobile phones.

This law gives shoot-at-site power to civil armed forces for maintenance of peace in the country. Also, electronic evidences will be acceptable while the judges, public prosecutors and witnesses will be given protection under the law. Basically, the amendment is aimed at strengthening the hands of the law-enforcement agencies against terrorists and ensuring speedy trial.

After the All Parties Conference (APC) convened earlier this year, there was wide criticism on the government that it is submitting to the terrorists instead of strengthening its counterterrorism strategy and interdicting strict policies and laws.

Under the PPO 2013, any police officer or member of the armed forces or civil armed forces deployed in any area may on reasonable apprehension,  warn or use the necessary force to prevent crime, and in so doing will exercise all the defined powers of a police officer.

It will be lawful for any such officer to fire or order firing on any person or persons against whom he is authorised to use force. Also, anyone found guilty of resisting enforcement of any law or legal process will have to spend 10 years behind bars, while personnel of law-enforcement agencies will be able to enter and search any premises without warrants and the arrested suspects will not be entitled to bail.

The PPP has rejected the Ordinance, saying it gives extraordinary powers to the law-enforcement agencies which may overstep — and in the process violate fundamental rights. The party’s parliamentary leader, Senator Raza Rabbani says the Ordinance in its present form is not acceptable and the party will oppose it when brought to the parliament.

But for Lt Gen (R) Moinuddin Haider, former governor of Sindh and ex-interior minister of Pakistan, this piece of legislation is “need of the hour”. He thinks Pakistan’s situation is complex at the moment — “We have stopped respecting the rule of law and the existing laws to curb terrorism are misused.”

So, he adds, these new laws will expedite the justice system and will improve investigation and prosecution methodologies — “In the past five years, few efforts were made to strengthen anti-terror laws.”

New law is there to check terrorism; however its success will depend on how, when and where this time-barred law is applied.

vaqargillani@gmail.com

 

 

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