Govt urged to mainstream religious minorities in the country

Politicians, social workers and members of religious minority groups of Sindh and their leaders have expressed grave concern over the discriminatory attitudes by the general masses and government towards religious minorities and have demanded from the government to make proper amendments in the legislation for the protection of rights of minorities.
While passing a long list of resolutions, the participants of the daylong conference, titled “Mainstreaming of Religious Minority in Pakistan” and arranged by Forum for Human Rights Pakistan (FHRP) in collaboration with Centre for Peace and Development (CPD) at a local hotel on Friday, demanded that the total number of assembly seats for religious minorities must be increased according to increasing population.
“Though, the religious minorities are given the right to double vote, but they practically always vote for Muslim candidates, while for their own representatives, they did not have the right to vote as their members were selected by political parties. Therefore they cannot be called genuine representatives of the minorities. Such a system must be abolished at once and the representatives must be elected by the people themselves,” said the participants of the conference.
They also demanded to make changes in the syllabus, which they said was based on the discrimination. They said that the Pakistani media must highlight the problems being faced by the religious minorities. They also demanded that government must ensure the implementation of the five percent quota for religious minorities that were allocated in public sector jobs.
On the occasion, former senator and PPP Sindh General Secretary Taj Haider, MPA Sindh Pitanbar Sewani, HRCP member Indar Ahuja, Action Aid Programme Sindh Manager and Balochistan Manager Shah Jahan Baloch, Karachi Bar Association President Naeem Qureshi, URC’s Zahid Farooq, Hotchand Karmani and others also spoke on the occasion.