Minority minister’s mess: After Diwali package fiasco, minority affairs director transferred

Director claims he was actually fired because he refused to be party to the department’s corruption.

KARACHI: It appears that the Sindh minority affairs director, Danish Saeed, will take the fall for the people’s anger against the department and their provincial minister, Mohan Lal Kohistani.

On Wednesday, Diwali was effectively ruined for hundreds of Hindus after the minister failed to deliver on promises of a Diwali package of Rs5,000 per person. The next day, Saeed received a transfer letter.

The director, who has just served four months at the office, claims that he was not being dismissed because of the financial assistance fund distribution but because of corruption in the department.

While he remains tight-lipped on these corruption allegations, he expressed anger with the unceremonious manner in which he was dismissed. “The secretary of the ministry cannot issue me a notification as I am a recruit of the Services and General Administration Department. The correct method to remove me was to write a letter to the Sindh chief secretary who would have then issued me the notification,” he said. “I feel angry because I did so much for them in such little time.”

Saeed counts on his fingers as he recounts his achievements - starting with the audit and helping to pick up the pieces after devolution - yet he feels he has been targeted because he was not willing to become a party to their crimes. “Once the minister got mad at me because I did not approve a Rs5 million tender that showed fake development plans of churches and temples,” he alleged.  When the department’s secretary, Shahabuddin Channa, was contacted for their version of events, he declined to comment.

Minority representatives have not agreed with this development. “We had no issue with the director, he was just implementing orders, we wanted the minister to be changed,” said Sardar Ramesh Singh. “Even if all that Saeed is saying is not true, it only shows that there is corruption in the department and that the people from the minorities have not been complaining for nothing.”  Michael Javed, a former MPA from the Christian community, claimed that corruption is so deep-rooted that even when it comes to appointments at government posts, true minority representatives never get very far. Both Singh and Javed have demanded a government inquiry into the matter.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 28^th, 2011.