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* KILL ON ROADS BY BUSES IN LAHORE |
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In Lahore, killings by buses increase day by day. Are narrow roads enough for buses and other traffic? There are a number of other problems also: People have to wait for a very long time on stops due to shortage of buses, gents freely travel in women’s cabin, bus fare is equal to van, buses remain overloaded and buses are rarely available unlike vans.
I request the government to address these problems forthwith.
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zia-ul-islam
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Lahore, Pakistan
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* Sugar Crises |
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Sugar prices have risen from Rs. 26 / kg to Rs. 45 / kg in few weeks, although Pakistan is an agriculture based country. Is this a good sign for our economy?
Sugar prices have risen because of the demand-supply situation. The supply in the market is not enough to meet the current demand. Sugar is made from the sugar cane, but our production of sugar cane is declining because the land used for farming is now being used for other purposes. Besides, sugar cane is now grown on lesser and lesser area with each passing year in Sindh due to scarcity of irrigation water.
With less sugar cane and sugar production, the mill owners can hoard marginal quantities of sugar and cause crisis in the market to raise prices. Sugar shortage will be on the rise every year because of the reduced area of sugarcane crop and steady growth in population. The mills producing sugar are not doing their job efficiently. The investment done in this sector is not up to the mark. Thus, productivity have decreased.
The main reason for the current rise in sugar prices are created by the hoarders, wholesalers and the mill owners. These three parties have created a sort of monopoly in the country. They have started stocking sugar and thus decreased the supply, so to increase the current price of sugar because of large demand. They know the productivity of the country is decreasing and they can influence the supply situation to gain abnormal profits.
Up to 37 biscuit manufacturers have shut down their businesses and prices of bakery items and sweets have increased by 20 to 25 percent. The increase in sugar price had adversely affected the biscuit industry, as 155 out of the 250 units in the country had been forced to shut down. The closure of biscuit factories is leading to people losing jobs. The pharmaceutical industry had also been affected by the increase in sugar price. Hotel owners have upped the prices of tea from Rs5 to Rs8-10 varying from hotel to hotel and businessmen associated with the sweet business have also raised the prices of their products. Sweets which were earlier being sold at Rs120 to Rs130 per kg. are now being sold at Rs150 to Rs180. To meet the current demand, government have to import sugar from abroad, which would have a negative influence on the country's trade balance.
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Abdul Mobeen Khan
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Lahore
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* Sugur Crisis |
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Sugar is not a lifeline rather it generates health problems. In our society use of sugar is much higher than anywhere else in the world. Rather than controlling our consumption of sugar, we are worried about producing more and that does not make sense.
Personally, I do not have any dietary or taste problem without consuming sugar, why cannot we limit our consumption rather than spending on imports? And secondly, we do not have any right to consume something, which we are unable to produce, whether it is tea, sugar or betel. In this 21st century, we need much more things to spend on like technology and industrial machinery, so my request will be to minimize the use of sugar.
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AHMAD NADEEM
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Multan
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* psycho-analyses of pervaiz musharraf |
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As Mr. Musharraf replied to the favourite leaders question i.e. my favourite leaders are Mr. M. A. Jinnah and General-cum-Field Marshal Ayub Khan! Can any sensible and levelheaded person, particularly a president of a civilian country reply like that? Even a common and average person will never reply you regarding his favourite persons that my favorite persons are Rudolf Hitler and the Chief of Human Rights Commission in U/N (say Mr. x at this time). I promptly got from Mr. Musharraf's reply that there is a hidden inside man in him who is the perfect example of hypocrisy and who lives in the world of illusions. I do agree that illusions and to be a perfect illusive person is the key-requirement of every dictator in this world (present and past). But Mr. Musharraf totally failed to distinguish between the personality, ethics, moral behaviour and the struggles and achievements of Mr. M. A. Jinnah and Gen. Ayub Khan and declared both of them his favourite leaders at the same time. How could two entirely different personalities be a role model or favourite of one-self?
As regards his reply about Mr. A. Q. Khan, I don’t know may be Mr. Musharraf holds some personal grudge or enmity against Dr. Qadeer or may be he holds some vested interest by this kind of weird reply for getting support to promote his illegitimate rule in Pakistan.
To a question, which event turned your life, he replied that when I became the chief of army staff, in fact he must say, when I became the president of Pakistan by virtue of my chief of army staff status! I ask you a simple question? What a soldier or an army chief is supposed to do for the remuneration he gets paid from the tax money of his countrymen? He should simply defend the borders and to strive for the defence of his country instead of becoming an illegitimate ruler of that country.
Now the next question, what in your opinion was the major event in Pakistan? He replied the tragic split of Pakistan in 1971, even when he knows that the split of Pakistan occurred under a military ruler Gen. Yahya khan. If Mr. Musharraf thinks that it was really a tragic event, then it means his illegitimate regime is also a big tragedy for Pakistan and would lead Pakistan (God forbid) to another split of Pakistan.
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omer farooq
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toronto/canada
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* Trafic Signal |
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Every day traffic police switch off signal lights between 5 P.M to 7 P.M and take the control manually. This creates traffic jam everywhere in Karachi. Pakistan is the first country, where traffic police (untrained and corrupted) control traffic manually and expend millions of rupees in the name of maintenance of traffic signals.
I asked several times traffic authorities and they simply replied this is the order of D.I.G. Will Mr. D.I.G. reply why he wanted control of signals manually?
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Imran Nisar
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Karachi-Pakistan
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