No stitch in time

A stitch in time might stump Einstein but it would certainly help the people of Pakistan, since several of the issues facing the country today are plain administrative failures, failure to apply the requisite stitches on time. A case in point is the fact that fogging machines have only now been ordered to prevent dengue in the hapless province of Punjab.

A year ago today, floods swept through the country and Pakistan was reduced to begging for aid from the international community, a familiar occurrence, and here we are again in 2011, flooded out, once more begging for help.

As always our politicians have turned popular misery into personal fodder, and newspapers carried pictures of a Mr Zardari (who normally skedaddles at first sign of flood), wading through flood waters, ankles engagingly exposed. In addition Mr Khosa demanded that Mr Sharif should resign since ‘he’ finds himself unable to control the outbreak of dengue in the Punjab.

The sheer opportunistic audacity and wrangling of these politicians takes one’s breath away: Dear Mr Khosa, seeing that ‘you’ are unable to control Karachi’s target killers, a larger moving target, you have some nerve demanding Mr Sharif achieve the same results with mosquitoes. And dear Mr Sharif, we’ve all had dengue already. Are you planning to spray Mr Khosa with those newly ordered fogging machines?

Meantime, Mr Zardari, much bolstered by his own bravery, taunted Mr Nawaz Sharif for not joining him in the water (and then he skedaddled), to which Mr Sharif responded with the somewhat enigmatic words:

“We have ample resources. We don’t need any foreign aid. If we can become an atomic power, what else we can’t do,” adding for good measure, “It is Quaid-e-Azam’s Pakistan, but his vision is yet to be materialised,” said Nawaz.

Fine, Mr Sharif, now if you can only explain just what that means…

It is easy to blame the government, but is the public much better?

We are fortunate to live in a respectable suburb, one even equipped with a trash collection system. Sixty four years into our country’s existence we have managed to institute this basic system in a few parts of some cities. Yet ‘masis’ regularly toss bags of garbage by the roadside as they walk along their way, on a road with a trash bin at either end.

Two months ago this year newspapers carried reports of drains and sewage networks having been illegally built on, and warned that this was a flood hazard unless encroaching structures were removed and the drains cleaned. Today heavy rains brought Karachi (and Lahore) to a standstill, with flooded roads and resultant hazards. Recently my daughter, speaking from the US was sad that two people had died in the US during the rains. These people died when they fled into a swollen creek as a result of a robbery.

Aliya love, we will celebrate the day only two people die in Pakistan. In our rains here, in one day at least ten people died in Karachi, including five members of the same family. These people were electrocuted in the rain waters, trying to save each other, in a city where there is no electricity when you need it. This is how people live here, and this is how they die.

So how is it that this country survives even the way it does?

In Pakistan what little is being done is being done by individuals.

The Pakistani public may have its faults, it may be misguided and uneducated, but the fact that this country still exists is by the Grace of God, and because of individuals who give freely of their time and money to make a difference.

Zara Aslam’s Environmental Protection Fund has mobilised Lahore’s school children in cleaning their communities. Aslam uses her personal funds and time to run this NGO. There are also other groups in Lahore picking up the slack, such as the Zimmedar Shehri, Pakistan Sustainability Network and the Lahore Environmental Youth Council.

In a country where the government is spun of a cold callous yarn, it is in our own interests to support organisations such as this, since there is not a single politician with enough credibility to attract donations in Pakistan at present, with the exception of Imran Khan.

It is time to get our priorities right and sideline the very people elected to do the jobs being done by these individuals, because in reality their only interest lies in winning seats and power for themselves.