Taking a stand: Fed up with corrupt officials, minorities form their own committee

The group has a total of 15 representatives - Hindus, Christians and Sikhs.

KARACHI:

Sindh’s religious minorities decided to take matters into their own hands and form a private body as a united front to represent themselves before government officials.

About 15 public representatives of religious minorities - Hindus, Christians and Sikhs - met up at Sarawan hotel in Saddar on Tuesday. The group decided they have faced enough injustice and plan to raise awareness about minority rights within these communities. This will allow their members to demand the funds and privileges that the government has set aside for them.

Rehan Gill, a member of the Central Church Youth Fellowship, said that Christians have barely any representation in the ministry as almost all the MPAs and MNAs are Hindus. He is now working to create awareness among underprivileged members of his community to help them recognise their rights. He complained that their elected representative, Michael Javed, who was to replace Shahbaz Bhatti, was also not given his seat.

“If I don’t see any of my people benefitting from the government allowances I wonder where all our money is going?” he quipped.

Narayan Pura Minority Welfare Committee’s Parkash Chanaal, meanwhile, claimed that the scheduled castes has no one speaking for them in the fund distribution committee of the ministry. “There are about 30,000 Hindus living at one place in Karachi,” he lamented, “yet there is no one we can tell our problems to.” We also feel that the problems of the Hindus of Karachi are overlooked to accommodate more of those from remote parts of Sindh, he said.

Even Sikhs are completely missing from the ministry, pointed out Sardar Lal Singh, a representative of the Pakistan Sikh Council. The MNAs and MPAs are not true representatives of the people, he alleged, adding that they are biased towards their political parties and religious castes.

The newly formed council will try to meet the minister and apprise him of the issues they face. If he still does not listen, the group is prepared to take up their last resort of campaigning against him.

“If we do this, he knows we can bring up truly affected people to the forefront and reveal his corruption and incompetence,” he warned. “We can call a huge crowd too.”

According to Michael Javed, there are about one million Christians in Karachi and another 0.7 million in Hyderabad and rural Sindh. He estimated the number of Hindus in rural Sindh is about 3.5 million and almost 40,000 in Karachi. Sikh representative Ramesh Singh said that there were about 2,500 Sikhs registered on the Karachi voter list in 2005 and about 6,000 in the province.

The minister was unable to comment on the situation while his secretary, Shahabuddin Channa, was oblivious to any discontent among the communities as there have been no complaints. “When thousands of people are going to turn up at a funds distribution announcement, how can we manage?” he said when asked about the incident on Diwali.

Javed dismissed this excuse, claiming that the ministry’s budget lapses every year. He said that perhaps the minister needs to be reminded that if the number of people exceeds the government’s estimates, it is his job to correct them. He must design policies to help the minorities instead of pleading ignorance.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4^th,  2011.