Protocol duties or public service: What to do……

As I entered my office on a cold morning of January 2, I was shocked to see a headline on The Daily Dawn’s metropolitan page stating that at least 60 percent of the Punjab police is supposed to perform merely protocol duties for the VVIPs. Oh my God! Shame
on us for claiming to be a democratic state.

Every conscious Pakistani knows that the salary of every single policeman is funded by the public taxes, and thus he is a public servant in the sense. He is entitled to do nothing except serving the public via all legal and fair ways. But, all is opposite
here. Our policemen, who draw their heavy salaries from our pockets, are serving and guarding the VVIPs only.

That particular news story, which I have mentioned in the start, also states that the crime rate in the province has increased by at least 17 percent during the year 2011 due to the security agencies’ lack of interest in their due duties. This is just the
reported figure and a number of crimes go unnoticed.

But I do not blame the policemen here. The actual fault lies at the administrative level. Our parliamentarians, ministers and other politicians consider themselves to be aliens who have nothing to do with the commoners. They cannot touch them, mix up with
them and talk to them as they are afraid of them. How nonsense it seems!

 Here I remember a very well-known incident from the political life of the second Islamic Khalif, Hazrat Umar (RA) who ruled over at least 1 million square miles of territory. Once, a foreign ambassador came to see him. Umar was not available in his home.
On inquiry, he was told that the Kalif might be out in some jungle. He reached there and got stunned to see that the biggest warrior and ruler of that era was sleeping comfortably on bushes alone, having no guard or weapon for his protection. The ambassador
asked the reason for such a care-free life and Umar told smilingly that he had no fear as he always used to do justice. Oh great!

Some so-called intellectual politician of this era will laugh on me and say ‘how stupid example that guy has cited here’. He/she may claim that in Umar’s era, there were no suicide attacks, no gun fires, no Talibans and no enemies. I would like to clarify
here that all these things existed at that time too in some different forms and the history pages are evident of it. But Umar and other such type of honest leaders did not care for anything as they used to rule in fair and square way. Our leaders do not do
so, therefore, they are forced to have weight of guards and weapons with them.

Believe me, the VIP culture has destroyed the nation. You daily experience long traffic jams and road blockades caused by VIP movements. For the transportation of a single person, at least two hundred people and twenty vehicles come in action. What a hell!

For God sake our political masters, enfranchise these 60 percent policemen so that they can guard us and employ your personal guards, if you are so much afraid of death, on your own expanses. Please do not plunder our taxes in this shitty way. May God bless
you with vision to see and insight to understand the ground realities.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=8004

Posted by Sharjeel Ahmad on Jan 2 2012. Filed under Opinion, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry