Venting frustration: Jiyalas ransack power minister’s office

Ahmed Mukhtar had allegedly ignored them in job vacancies in the ministry.

ISLAMABAD:

Activists of the Pakistan People Party’s youth wing ransacked the office of Federal Minister for Water and Power in Islamabad on Tuesday. The protesting activists alleged that the minister had ignored them in job vacancies recently filled in the ministry.

Shakil Abbasi, the central vice president of the People’s Youth Organisation (PYO), told The Express Tribune that around 70 PYO activists visited federal minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar’s office on Wednesday after they were given an appointment by Mukhtar’s director a day earlier.

“We wanted to meet the minister to talk about 150 vacancies in the Rawalpindi region which the ministry officials say were filled with the youth,” Abbasi said. “But none of the youth wing workers got selected for the jobs.”

The activists waited at the office for a couple of hours but the minister did not appear.

“Later, we were told that the minister is not coming to the office because of ill health,” Abbasi said. “Even the director who had set up the meeting refused to meet us personally.”

He said the director even insulted the activists by telling them he does not care and “they can do whatever they can.”

That is when the activists — most of who claimed to be “jiyalas” — lost their cool and attacked the minister’s office, breaking the glass window. They occupied the office and chanted slogans to echo their demands.

Umar Abbasi, one of the protesters, said he has been a die-hard Pakistan People’s Party supporter all his life but the party leaders have failed to deliver on the promises of getting employment for its workers.

“We are the people who have sacrificed for the party and we have been neglected for the past five years,” Umar Abbasi said. “In every government ministry, jobs are being sold and yet we are ignored. We wish Benazir Bhutto shaheed was alive today, she would have answered our pleas.”

Tanveer Alam, the minister’s public relations officer, said the vacancies are filled on merit and cannot simply be given to PYO activists. Alam said the Election Commission of Pakistan has also put a ban on appointments in the federal government.

He said the minister could not meet the activists because he had taken ill.

The furious PYO activists were only pacified after state minister for interior, Tasneem Qureshi, intervened. Qureshi assured them he would take the matter up with Mukhtar and resolve the issue within the next two days.

The Islamabad police were called to the scene but no case was registered against the protesters.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 30^th, 2013.