This senior citizen wishes an anchor may innovate by hosting true civic-minded guests, who have filed complaints
BAHRAIN: The week-long hot topic for news anchors, a fortnight ago, was the child abuse ring in Kasur. Today, they are all engaged in the same old game, as is routine for them — to disclose sensational stories every evening, shedding tears, till they find a new topic to put dust on the current one. During that week, the police, bureaucracy, politicians, the chief minister of Punjab, and all his allies displayed how promptly they took notice of the grave issue. None, however, answered as to why there had been no action taken until the story broke.
How many NGOs and other institutions and departments operate in our country today, all in the name of so-called child protection? Through a talk show, I learnt for the first time, that there also existed a Punjab government department called the child protection bureau, whose head appeared to have no shame that her organisation remained ignorant of the happenings in Kasur. On the talk show, she behaved as if she was a spokesperson for the chief minister of Punjab, rather than the head of a child protection agency. Both at federal and provincial levels there are separate special cells in the ombudsmen secretariats concerned, established under the name, Children Complaint Cell, where children can file complaints. If the memories of this acutely diabetic senior citizen are not misguiding him, then his understanding is that these so-called cells are being supported with funds from Unicef. What exactly are the activities of these cells? When one goes through social media, it seems that these cells hold a lot of seminars and workshops in luxury hotels, which entail heavy expenses. If one goes to, for example, the Sindh ombudsman website, in the child complaints section, the only information given is about the agenda, workshops and seminars of the cell. What is the professional capability of those working in these cells?
Around six months ago, when a domestic child servant was severely beaten in Lahore by the employer, many news anchors talked about it, but only for the purpose of creating sensation. One claimed that he would continue following the case and update viewers, which did not happen. To my knowledge, which may be wrong and outdated, not a single ombudsman in Pakistan has spoken about the Kasur tragedy so far. What has the Punjab Ombudsman Children Complaint Cell been doing? Is the cell waiting for those young children to travel to them from Kasur and file a complaint? The cell, most probably running on foreign funds, should have taken suo-motu notice of this. The nation is tired of seeing the same 20 to 30 faces on every talk show for the last 10 years. This senior citizen wishes that an anchor may innovate by hosting on his programme, true civic-minded guests, who have filed complaints with an ombudsman complaint cell and who can tell the audience about his or her experiences.
Muhammad Javed
Published in The Express Tribune, August 24th, 2015.
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