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Edhi remembered on his fourth death anniversary

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Edhi remembered on his fourth death anniversary

APP | Dawn.com
Jul 08 2020


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In this photograph taken on February 15, 2016, Abdul Sattar Edhi, the head of Edhi Foundation sits in his office in the port city of Karachi. — AFP/File
The fourth death anniversary of philanthropist and social worker Abdul Sattar Edhi was observed on Wednesday across the country.

One of the most renowned and respected personalities of Pakistan, Edhi passed away in 2016 at the age of 88. He was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2013 but had been unable to get a transplant due to frail health. He was receiving treatment at the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT).

The late humanitarian established one of the biggest charity foundations of the country, through which he helped the poor, children, women and differently-abled persons as well as animals. He also laid the world's largest volunteer ambulance network, APP reported.

Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif paid tribute to Edhi, calling him "a true embodiment of selfless service to humanity".

"What a towering personality and an unending source of inspiration he was," he said in a tweet. "His life and work have influenced generations around the world."

PPP chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari offered tribute to Edhi in a message posted on the party's Twitter account today, in which he said that the humanitarian "made history by working tirelessly" for those in need.

"The coming generations will give his example," Bilawal was quoted as saying.


Edhi's empire

Revered by many as a national hero, Edhi created a charitable empire out of nothing. He masterminded Pakistan’s largest welfare organisation almost single-handedly, entirely with private donations.

Born to a family of traders in Gujarat, Edhi arrived in Pakistan in 1947.

The state’s failure to help his struggling family care for his mother — paralysed and suffering from mental health issues — was his painful and decisive turning point towards philanthropy.

Edhi opened his first clinic in 1951 in Karachi. “Social welfare was my vocation, I had to free it,” he says in his autobiography, ‘A Mirror To The Blind’.

Motivated by a spiritual quest for justice, Edhi and his team over the years created maternity wards, morgues, orphanages, shelters and homes for the elderly — all aimed at helping those who cannot help themselves.

The most prominent symbols of the foundation — its 1,500 ambulances — are deployed with efficiency to the scene of terrorist attacks that tear through the country.

Content with just two sets of clothes, he slept in a windowless room of white tiles adjoining the office of his charitable foundation. Sparsely equipped, it had just one bed, a sink and a hotplate.

“He never established a home for his own children,” his wife Bilquis, who manages the foundation’s homes for women and children, had told AFP in an interview.

What he has established is something of a safety net for the poor and destitute, mobilising the nation to donate and help take action — filling a gap left by a lack of welfare state.


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About Edhi Foundation

Edhi Foundation is the single best foundation across Pakistan and one of the best social welfare service providers across the world running on non-commercial, non-political, and non-communal basis, serving round-the-clock without any discrimination of color, class, and creed is enjoying exclusive credentials in the shape of awards and shields conferred upon Mr. Abdul Sattar Edhi and Mrs. Bilquis Edhi by governmental and non-governmental organizations on national and international level for rendering their exemplary services to humanity in multidimensional fields.

The diversified fields in which Abdul Sattar Edhi played his greatest role for; saving the lives of thousands of newborn babies by placing the cradles outside the Edhi centres, fostering the abandoned babies and children, free nurturing disabled and handicapped people, free caring and feeding women and elderly people who were subjected to torture or neglected by their families, free supporting to ailing patients by providing free medication and medicines through his mobile dispensaries, hospitals, and the diabetic centre at Karachi.

In addition to above, he offered his services in many other areas—like providing land, air, and marine ambulance services during accidents to shift patients to hospitals, national and international relief and aid assistance to the affectees of natural debacles, providing relief aid to refugees in various countries, providing emergency services to the sufferers of drought, fire, and flood, saving the lives of drowned people added with recovering dead bodies from the seas and floods, free rehabilitating the drug addicts, free tracing the missing people, free arranging marriages for the helpless girls and boys, providing free food, clothing, and blankets to needy people.

Besides above, he also served the humanity by offering his services by, providing free technical education to needy people to make them self sufficient through the technical knowledge and skills, providing religious education to the children to make them the best human beings, providing consultancy on family planning and maternity services, providing free blood and plasma to the disadvantaged people, providing free shelter, food, and caring to mentally retarded people, caring by giving shelter and food to orphan and helpless children.

Services to humanity rendered by Abdul Sattar Edhi and his spouse Mrs. Bilquis Edhi never end here, he played his role in some more areas—such as; provided free legal aid to bail out or the prisoners from the prisons, financial and medical support to the prisoners, provided crutches and supporters to the handicapped people, and gave exclusive free bathing and shrouding services to unclaimed dead bodies, so on and so forth. All these services are so much outstanding and exceptional that Edhi Foundation’s role can truly be attributed to an unprecedented example of services to the nation and country of Pakistan as well as humanity, across the globe.

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They did not give him international recognition , they did not give him Nobel Prize or awards .. He is not worthy and deserving in their eyes, I'd say its these Awards and Nobel prize that were unworthy of him ..
 
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Among the true legends of the world. :tup:
 
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Back in early 2000s, I spoke to a person who used to drive Edhi Ambulance.
He told me that he was stopped by a group of dacoits near Gujrat at midnight. As soon as they realised that it was Edhi Ambulance, they didnt even touch the guy and told him to leave. According to that person, gang leader of the dacoits told his men that the day police will kill them, its going to be Edhi foundation that will be taking care of their dead bodies so dont harm the guy.
Some people just simply can't be replaced.
 
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