Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Pakistan: Gunmen target polio workers, kill policeman
Haroon Janjua
A police officer was shot dead in northwestern Pakistan when gunmen riding a motorcycle opened fire on a polio vaccination team that he was escorting.
Armed gunmen on Tuesday shot dead a police officer guarding a team of polio vaccine handlers in northwestern Pakistan, according to local officials.
The attack took place in Karak, a remote town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on the second day of a five-day national polio immunization drive. According to official figures, Karak and adjoining areas recorded 15 of province's 22 cases polio cases last year.
"Two gunmen came on a motorcycle and attacked our colleague Junaid Ullah while he was escorting the polio team. They opened fire on the van carrying polio workers," Muhammad Ishaq Khan, a police official in Karak, told DW.
"Police teams have launched an operation to catch the attackers. The polio vaccination campaign has been temporarily halted; we will resume it in the area tomorrow," he added.
The latest polio campaign aims to vaccinate more than 40 million children under the age of five across Pakistan, with the help of around 285,000 frontline workers.
Islamist attacks
Islamist militants regularly carry out violent attacks against polio vaccination workers in northwestern Pakistan.
The Taliban claim that polio eradication campaigns are being used by the West as a cover for spying. They allege that the drives are similar to a hepatitis vaccination program run by the imprisoned Pakistani doctor Shakeel Afridi, who allegedly helped the CIA find al Qaeda's former chief Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was killed by the US Special Forces at his Abbottabad hideout in May, 2011.
"Polio vaccination is considered a foreign drive and a propaganda campaign in these areas of Pakistan," Rahim ullah Yousafzai, a security analyst, told DW.
Rising polio cases in Pakistan
Polio is now only found in two countries — Afghanistan and Pakistan — with the latter struggling to cope with a surge in cases over the past few months. The Muslim-majority South Asian country has registered 68 polio cases since the start of the year.
The disease, which mainly affects children under the age of five, can infect the spinal cord, causing paralysis.
Pakistani authorities brought down polio cases to as low as eight in 2017 and 12 in 2018. However, in 2019, cases rose to 148.
Pakistan started its first nationwide polio eradication campaign in 1994. At the time, the country was recording 20,000 polio cases each year on an average. By 2004, 10 years into the campaign, the number of cases in the country had dropped to only 30 per year. Health experts dubbed it a major achievement.
However, the campaign lost momentum after the September 11, 2001 attacks and the deteriorating security situation in the years following the US invasion of Afghanistan. The US-led war on terror in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region made it difficult for authorities to focus on polio eradication.
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has also had an impact on polio vaccination campaigns, with the government's focus shifting to curb COVID-19 in the country.
#Pakistan #Balochistan Neglected by Policymakers, Ballnigwer Faces Educational Crisis the Most
Sher Jan P. Shohaz
@SheeranRind
Entertaining most of its audience, CM Balochistan Jam Kamal Khan’s tweet on 13 December on upgrading secondary schools read, ” Our government has decided to upgrade 53 girls primary schools into middle and 53 from the middle to high schools”, is a straight emphasis on economic statistics aiming to build a tall statue of his virtue in his regimen rather actually reforming education sector in Balochistan.
Having the highest illiteracy rate countrywide, Balochistan welcomes every initiative which helps in recovering it from the clutches of illiteracy based on trimming the breakneck rise in illiteracy rather than making huge discussions on economic statistics which never happen to be real development to the occupants of the province.
Concentrating so heavily on upgrading primary schools into middle and middle into high, our policymakers and government; following the traditional ways of educational provisions, are ignoring danger signs that the rest of the students in the province, especially those who belong to rural areas, couldn’t reach to lessen illiteracy ratio of the province is due to not getting enrolled in higher education which exposes that the establishment of colleges was one of the major aspects always neglected by the government.
Many districts in the province don’t facilitate the inhabitants their educational demands respectively. Each district owns a number of tehsils and sub tehsils that are yet to be provided higher education. This neglected need enriches the illiteracy rate in the province further if the policymakers don’t recognize themselves making decisions on the basis of quantity than quality. The federal efforts of the government give the impression of erecting a political statue of doing something in the regimen on low budgets rather than forming an experience of educational rise.
Located 90 KMs in the west of Turbat, Ballnigwer, a sub-tehsil, is one of those regions where higher education is yet to be introduced. Students completing matriculation from the region, having financial burdens on them, are interested less in the number to move to the nearby cities for the seek of higher education. This pause in their education includes several reasons making poverty one of the most common in all. As the region is an agricultural site is left with the only profession of agriculture. It is hard to manage the expenditure of every adult of a family in moving to other cities.
As a result, it’s hard to find a student persuading higher education in a family living in such regions.
Nazila, 16, a secondary student from Ball, wishes to become a lecturer after completing her degree. “I have always thought to be a professional in life. After completing my matriculation from the village, I have been asked by my parents to pause my study since we are financially powerless.” Said Nazila, “I read books at home but I dream of being enrolled in a college and university where i can grow my intellectual journey more strong and can achieve the desire i keep. I wish we were built a college in our village.”
Comparatively, a number of girls from the village are destitute from higher education which even counts a great focus on growing illiteracy in the region.
17-year old Nayaz, the only son of his parents, after completing matriculation, is working in the field in Ballnigwer. Nawaz was an extremely intelligent student, according to his Math teacher, when he was a school student. Nawaz said that would grow an artist after he completes his higher education in a university.
“I love painting and sketching a lot. I wish we had a college here in Ballnigwer where we could complete our at least higher education. I wanted to learn and join a government job, but my father can’t afford me on sending other cities for higher education since he’s the only one to earn and feed.” Said Nayaz.
Recently, the only boys high school in Ballnigwer has been administered to provide HSSC certificates to the students enrolled in registers. Unfortunately, the school has not been managed to conduct classes for the very students. No teacher so far has been hired for college classes. This upgrading leaves the locals amazed.
The female students of the region are entirely dependent on one school. Located at the epicenter of the region Ball, Government Girls High School Ballnigwer has rejected many students coming from far-flung areas such as Dezder, Kocho, Kapkapar, Kashap, Talvi, ShayZangi, Drachko, Hochath, and many more. What does the word “Emerging Balochistan” mean to them?
It’s even worse to inform those female students from Talvi, Shayzangi, Sorik, and few other areas, pay walk to the school taking them 1 and a half hour to reach there.
A primary girls school in Talvi town in Ballnigwer has been promoted to the middle which let us raise many questions to policymakers. Keeping the number of high schools in the region in mind, the idea of promoting primary to the middle should have been introduced. Since we have one high school in the region for girls, this promotion from primary to the middle is equal to zero reform. Why not promoting from primary to high directly? This could have been considered a more innovative and accepted move.
According to civil society representatives and NGOs in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province, Balochistan has the lowest female literacy rates anywhere in the world where women and girls have extremely poor access to education.
Increasing institutions in number will never help in decreasing the illiteracy ratio but quality education does.
Balochistan has the lowest literacy rate than all other Pakistan’s provinces that stands at 40pc.
The greater contribution to illiteracy is often noted from rural areas of the province where opportunities for education aren’t entertained. With that said, illiteracy causes unemployment, low community involvement, and low self-esteem. Unemployment leads to poverty and poverty gives rise to criminal activity, child labor, poor health, homelessness, child marriage, and many other struggles. This all worst is given birth since awareness via education is denied.
I believe upgrading primary institutions into the middle of rural areas contribute nothing to educating Balochistan. To be productive, the provincial government must undo its ask for this and emphasis upgrading primary into high. It doesn’t cost the regime a giant pocket to replace middle by building high schools and providing colleges to each far-flung tehsil and sub tehsil which locate a great number of people living.
https://balochistanvoices.com/2021/01/neglected-by-policymakers-ballnigwer-faces-educational-crisis-the-most/
#Pakistan - #PPP deplores and condemns vicious lies purveyed by a section of media
Pakistan People’s Party deplores and condemns the vicious lies propagated by a private television alleging back channel contacts of the Party with the government as a result of which the Party is alleged to have backtracked from its criticism of the NAB in the Parliament.
In a statement the Secretary General of the PPP Parliamentarians Farhatullah Babar said that neither there are back channel contacts with the government nor the Party has relented from its condemnation of the NAB as a tool of political re-engineering. It was on the PPP’s initiative that the motion was taken up in the Senate that lay bare how NAB was working as the political arm of the regime, he recalled.
The PPP believes that the country can neither achieve economic progress nor political stability as long accountability is used for political witch hunting by the NAB in its present form and legislation. No accountability will be genuine unless everyone who is paid out of the national exchequer is judged under the same accountability mechanism and the same accountability law which also respects constitutional requirements of due process and fair trial as in Article 10-A of the Constitution.
Article 10-A states, “For the determination of his civil rights and obligations or in any criminal charge against him a person shall be entitled to a fair trial and due process”
It is most unfortunate that the TV channel allowed itself to be used as propaganda arm of the regime to sow dissensions within the combined opposition that is determined to pursue its democratic campaign against the selected government as well as its selectors, he said.
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/24294/
US invites Bilawal,Asif Zardari to Biden’s oath-taking ceremony
Bilawal Bhutto is expected to attend the oath taking ceremony; however Asif Zardari cannot attend this ceremony because his name is listed in the Exit Control List. Peoples Party circles claimed that their leaders were the first who received the invitation in Pakistan. The invitation came from the Democratic Party, which has close links with the Pakistan People’s Party. Last month, Murad Ali Shah, Chief Minister of Sindh, visited USA and held meeting with the members of the Democratic Party, sources said.
Asif Zardari and Obama governments had worked closely on different issues including War on Terror and Kerry Lugar Bill. Earlier The Correspondent had reported that Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM) politics, and its leadership, will be effected by the recent election of Joe Biden as the US President Elect has close relations with the PPP.
https://www.thecorrespondent.pk/2021/01/12/bilawal-zardari-invited-for-joe-bidens-oath-taking-ceremony/