Day: December 5, 2011

MANSEHRA: A man killed his wife and nephew on Sunday after suspecting that they were having an affair. The police said that, Sher Khan claimed he killed his wife, Fehmeeda, and his nephew, Jamshed, after them in “indecent” condition at his house.

However, Jamshed’s father claimed that his son was killed outside Khan’s house, indicating that Jamshed was innocent.

Sourec: TRIBUNE

SIALKOT: Country Programme Director UN-Women Islamabad Alice Harding Shackelford while addressing a largely attended ceremony organised by Baidarie Sialkot and UN-Women to appreciate and encourage the equal opportunity employers said that the conditions of home based women workers in Pakistan were quite similar to those of women workers in Italy some forty years back.

The working conditions gradually improved there in Italy and these are improving here as well.

“Several positive changes have already taken place in the working conditions in Sialkot” said Alice in a delightful tone while addressing the stakeholders at Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

She said that provision of enabling atmosphere to women workers will certainly pay dividends to the business community at large.

Alice said that inclusion of a woman into workforce of an industrial set up does not provide benefit just only to an individual but it also proves beneficial for her children and for her family.

It would therefore be extremely useful to provide job opportunities to the women workers in all those sectors and disciplines where they can perform their role in suitable and productive ways.

Umme Laila, Executive Director, Home Net Pakistan, while addressing the house gave an overview of the efforts underway to formulate the national policy on home based workers.

She said that in sequel of the 18th amendment to the constitution of Pakistan the process of policy development had some what been delayed but it is quite encouraging that all the four provincial governments in the country have moved forward to work on policy document on the home based workers and it is expected that very soon they will legislate to acknowledge the home based workers as regular workers and provide them with all of the necessary legal rights.

Speaking on the occasion Professor Arshid Mehmood Mirza, Executive Director, Baidarie Sialkot, invited attention to the fact that Sialkot District portrays two different and sharply contradicting kinds of scenarios.

The mostly noticed view of the district generally presents it to be the home of affluent and well-off industrialists and businessmen who contribute sizably to the foreign exchange reserves and help in pacing up the growth of the national economy.

Possible trickle-down effect of their economic robustness is supposed to be helpful in improving the employment, working and living conditions of the people leading their lives at the gross root levels.

This seems plausibly convincing but unfortunately it is not the whole truth.

Addressing the participants of the seminar Muhammad Tahseen, Executive Director, South Asia Partnership Pakistan, said that there are almost 300 million workers across the globe who are compelled by the circumstance to use their homes as their workplaces.

The number of such workers in South Asia is around 50 million whereas in Pakistan the home based workers surpass the figure of 12 million in Pakistan.

Tahseen said that it is quite unfortunate that the young girls in Pakistani society have to leave their schooling incomplete and go to workplaces to earn livelihood for themselves and their families.

He said that civilised societies ensure that their women have easy access to their rights to education and employment but Pakistan lags much behind in providing such guarantees to its women.

In Pakistan approximately 120 million women are working in formal and informal sectors of economy and in fact our society for its subsistence is indebted to the hard work done by them.

He said that discussions memogate and NRO issues are neither the dialogues of the poor and nor have been ensued for their benefit.

These and others of the like are the non-issues which have just been raised and are being highlighted to keep the attention of the people diverted and distracted from the real issues of the poor living far below the hunger line.

Hina Noureen, President Baidarie, while addressing the participants of the ceremony said that there is a genuine and real need of extension, replication and up scaling of the initiatives tested during the piloting phase of providing integrated support to home based workers in Sialkot.

She said that it has become very necessary that credible data representing number of home based women workers, their living and working conditions and available job diversification options in district be collected tabulated published and disseminated among the stakeholders in the relevant circles of state and society so that the remedial actions to address the problems may be taken.

Addressing the house, Naeem Anwar Qureshi, President, Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that Sialkot business community socially responsible.

It has undertaken several projects of public welfare and is willing to take all the steps that may be useful for empower and develop their workers.

The significant feature of the ceremony was the distribution of the certificates to appreciate the services of the employers for opening their doors for the women workers and providing them with an atmosphere in which they may work enjoying maximum esteem, honour and respect.

Alice awarded appreciation certificates to Forward Sports (Pvt) Ltd, Forward Gear (Pvt) Ltd, Starpak Martial Arts (Pvt) Ltd, Mansha & Brothers (Pvt) Ltd, Capital Sports (Pvt) Ltd and Anwar Khawaja Industries (Pvt) Ltd Syed Saghir Bukhari from UN-Women, Uzma Quresh, Dr Mariam Noman, Sidra, Javeria, Hafiz Abdul Qadeer and Ijaz Ahmad also spoke on the occasion.

Sourec: BUSINESS RECORDER

By: Sidrah Roghay

As a sixteen year old from the relatively quiet city of Saadiqabad, X was excited at the prospect of visiting her sister’s house in Karachi. She wondered what life in the “big city” would be like and painstakingly planned out her vacation. Little did she know that the visit would leave her traumatised for the rest of her life.

Her sister, who lived at flat number 209 in Munir Arcade of Gulistan-e-Jauhar, sold her to a pimp in Hyderabad for Rs250,000. “She told me I am sending you to a house in Hyderabad as a domestic servant. That I’ll have to cook and clean.” However, it was a completely different picture when she got there.

“There were a lot of girls there. Five prostitutes and two daughters of the pimp,” she recalls. Once the nature of her work was revealed to her, X refused. For 15 days, no one forced her against her wishes. “They were kind to me and I only had to cook and clean. They thought their kindness will make me succumb to their wishes.”

But when love did not work, the torture began. The young girl shows burn marks on her hands, cigarette butt burns on her neck and wrists as well as marks of a rope around her neck, which was used to strangle her. There are bruises and scars on her back as well. “They would beat me with anything they had. Thick wooden planks were the most common.”

Then one day she was drugged and when she woke up, there was blood on her clothes and her body hurt. X realised she had been raped.

Things went on like this. She was given sleeping pills and alcohol to make her lose her senses and one client after another came to her. “Once I begged a man to leave me alone. I cried in front of him and God knows why he left me alone,” X shares as she breaks into tears.

With time, the girl grew rebellious and once tried jumping off the third floor to escape. She would shout and throw tantrums and then one lucky day, X escaped. She ran to the nearest bus stop where she met two middle aged women, Saima and Shahnaz, both sisters.

“I begged them to take me home to Sadiqabad. They agreed, but brought me to Karachi.” X was put up in a hotel room in Saddar, where she stayed for three days. “The women kept telling me they were here for some work, after which they would take me home, but I overheard them talking on the phone about selling me off to a pimp in Quetta, for Rs150,000.”

The women would lock the room when they left her alone and told the waiter that it was a safety measure as “our girl sleepwalks.” One day, X called out to the waiter and said she had been kidnapped. The waiter contacted the police and the law enforcers raided the hotel, arresting the two suspected women.

An FIR 19/2011 was registered under section 371/511 and 544 at the Saddar police station after which investigations got under way.

Shahnaz, one of the two women, also sent two of her daughters to the pimp in Hyderabad willingly. She received Rs250,000 for one girl in advance for a period of forty days. An additional sum of Rs200 per night is given to the woman. Each night costs Rs,3000.

Saima, the other women, admits she was asked to sell X to a pimp in Quetta, “since she was particularly troublesome due to her frequent tantrums”.

The SHO of the women’s police station, Ghazala, reveals that cases of human trafficking are on the rise due to abject poverty. She suspects this particular case involves a countrywide mafia, which forces children into prostitution.

On December 9, the court will summon X, where article 164 will be put to action. “After this we will be able to catch the culprits from all over Pakistan. Right now, only this case of abduction comes in our jurisdiction,” the SHO says.

The Society for the Protection of Child Rights (Spaarc) is taking care of the litigation expenses. If found guilty, the accused women would be sentenced to twenty five years in prison, which is non-bailable and no penalty can be paid for it.

Finally relaxed now that she is in safe hands, X looks forward to meeting her family who thought she was working as a house maid in Hyderabad. “I will finish my studies now and become a policewoman”.

“I hope these women rot in jail, so that they cannot ruin the lives of other young girls like me,” she says. “May you all rot forever,” she calls out to Saima and Shahnaz, who are sitting in one corner of the room.

Source: THE NEWS

By: Farzana Ali Khan

PESHAWAR: The arrest of the three accused officials and two others speaks volumes about the provincial government’s serious interest in the case of Uzma Ayub, a teenage pregnant rape victim from Karak.

In an interview with The News, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Home Secretary Azam Khan said a new investigation team headed by Superintendent of Police (SP) Attiqullah Khan has been formed to complete the investigation and submit a final challan to the relevant authorities after removing the lacunas mentioned in the earlier report. “Though the inquiry report was in favour of the victim to a great extent, still we felt the need for further investigation due to some contradictory statements of the accused persons as well as the victim’s father,” he said.

Explaining the report, the home secretary said the role of victim’s father needed to be further investigated as paras 12 and 13 of the report state that 15 days before of the incident the father of the victim had submitted an application to the relevant authorities about the abduction of his son Alamzeb and theft of the valuables from his house by the accused.

Azam Khan said the most important point of the report was that the police investigators in order to discredit the accused Alamzeb stated that he was a proclaimed offender in the case (FIR#238 u/s 324/34 PPC). It was further stated that the accused has a history of crimes and they presented different cases against Alamzeb but from the record it transpired that Alamzeb was never declared a proclaimed offender in real sense of the term. Rather no proceedings under CrPC were ever initiated in this regard against him.

He further said that the biased role of the local police and prosecution authorities in the whole issue became more visible from different facts like the named persons were charged with a cognisable offence, for which police was bound to register a case as per Section 154 of the CrPC but the police did not do so initially and were forced to register a case only when the court ordered.

The news about Uzma’s escape from the kidnapper’s captivity was published on October 5 and Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti had ordered setting up of a committee the next day to probe the alleged kidnapping and rape case. The committee, headed by Home Secretary Azam Khan and comprising Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police (Investigation) Nisar Khan Tanoli and Kohat Commissioner Sahibzada Mohammad Anis, was supposed to submit the report within a week but it was released on October 26, taking about 20 days. The home secretary said that the process of investigation would be completed in the shortest possible time and the final report would be released soon.

The News also learnt that the accused persons were supposed to appear before the court on November 29 but upon their request the court was adjourned till December 2.

Source: THE NEWS