The province of Sindh is beset with a lot of problems. Agriculture, the main source of livelihood of Sindhi people and their spiritual love, has been greatly destroyed. Kidnapping for ransom is rising in various parts of the province. People are abducted as desired by the three Ps (Pirs, Policemen and Punchayats) for their ‘forced marriages”. Brainless breed of bureaucrats and technocrats who are selfish to the core, rule the roost in the province today. Bribery is the norm, both, in the public and private offices. Corruption is pervasive. It has even become a symbol of status. Crime is everywhere in the province. It seems that the hardened criminals are given ‘permits’ to commit crime anywhere they feel like in the province. The courts want to give speedy justice but they suffer both from the workload and shortage of resources including the manpower, material and money.
It is a crying shame that education has not been on the agenda of our past and present provincial rulers. They appear averse to the promotion of education. That’s why they usually hire errant officials who are disliked by teachers, staffers and students. They usually use undemocratic ways and means to gag the teachers. They push teachers to the wall to suspend the academic, educational and research activities on the campuses. Now-a-days, leading varsity of province the Sindh University, Jamshoro has been closed and the teachers are on strike. It is more than two months’ now but our rulers are not moved. The future of 25 thousand students is reported to be at stake due to egocentrism of a chosen few but who cares. Meanwhile farmers are committing suicides because the prices of agri-inputs are soaring and they are beyond their purchasing power. They are cheated, both, by the brokers and the grubby revenue officers. They produce bumper crops but those are not being purchased.
Health and hygiene like education has not been the prime concern of our past and present rulers. Our hospitals are in miserable conditions. They are short of medicines and manpower. One can witness heaps of garbage in front of various hospitals in the provinces. Ambulances are for personal use of doctors or hospital administrations but not for patients. Billions of rupees are spent over cosmetic measures and there is no one to conduct the audit both of the money and the quality of the work. Mindless, merciless marauders manage the affairs in the province. Notorious lot is regarded as the “tribal chieftains”: they are in the good books of our political elite. On the contrary, the pious and positive people are suffering. Order is not visible anywhere in the entire province. Policemen are frequently reported to be involved in heinous crimes. Crime-friendly feudal lords use their clout to get hardened criminals recruited in the police department. Those policemen have nothing to do with the policing but they just dance to the tunes of their mentors and commit crime.
Similarly quacks, not the doctors, run their clinics in virtually every nook and cranny of the province. They sell spurious and fake medicines and cause premature deaths. Sindh province has the highest ratio of highly qualified unemployed doctors. Those who were hired during the past regimes, their services are not being regularized as being done by the federal government. Lady doctors who have spent more than eight to ten years with any department such as the Family Planning, bear the brunt.
Manzoor Wasan, the incumbent Home Minister like the incumbent Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has utterly disappointed all and sundry. The law and order in upper and lower Sindh regions has gone out of hand. People are left at the mercy of dacoits. I am sure those legendary souls of Sindh including Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daring daughter, Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto must be turning in their graves to see how the present leaders are treating their people. These errant rulers have never shown their commitment to bring peace, progress and prosperity in Sindh. However, I appeal to President Asif Ali Zardari, who I know has the milk of human kindness, to look after Sindh and the Sindhis.
HASHIM ABRO,
Islamabad, February 18.