Marital bliss: 30 couples tie the knot in mass wedding ceremony

NGO funds wedding for needy couples in Sukkur

SUKKUR: Extreme poverty, rising unemployment and inflation has hurt people like us, said Piyar Ali, a religious teacher at a seminary in Sangi near Sukkur. “Due to this, marrying off our children had become a distant dream for us and at this crucial moment, Step came to our rescue and today my daughter is getting married,” he said with teary eyes. An NGO, Step Welfare, organised a wedding ceremony for 30 couples, at Lab-e-Mehran on Saturday night.

This is Step’s second time organising a mass wedding in two years - it provided the means for 10 couples to wed last year, according to organiser Shaista Khoso. Funds for the mass wedding were procured through the Benazir Youth Development Programme and through donations by local philanthropists, she said. “Besides organising mass weddings, our NGO is doing a lot for the welfare of special people and the education and health sectors,” she explained.



According to her, a marriage ceremony costs around Rs150,000, including dowry. “The couples belong to different areas of upper Sindh such as Sukkur, Rohri, Ali Wahan, Bagarji, Pano Akil and Kandhkot, among others,” explained Khoso. Talking about the procedure of selecting deserving couples, she said their teams conduct surveys in different areas to identify poor and needy families unable to afford weddings. “Next year, we are going to organise a mass wedding for around 100 couples,” she said.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, one of the grooms, Fazlur Rehman Khoso, a resident of the Ali Khan Khoso village, said, “I belong to a poor family and earn my livelihood by operating a donkey cart”. Whatever I earn after the hard labour of the day is quite insufficient to feed a family of eight, he added, saying that in these circumstances it is almost impossible for him to even think about marriage. Thanking the NGO, he said, “Today I am getting married and am hopeful that my bride will change my fate for the better”.

Another groom, Abdul Latif is a resident of Khanpur and works at a roadside hotel. “I earn Rs100 a day,” he said, explaining that this is nothing due to inflation these days. “My parents were desperately trying to save some money for this [wedding] but it seemed an uphill task,” he explained. The NGO visited our home and promised to facilitate my marriage to the girl my parents had chosen for me and today they have fulfilled their promise, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 7^th, 2016.