My Motherland Pakistan

[haviZsultan]

Beautifully written rebuttal. If I may, whilst it is very hurtful and vexing to hear bitter words about our motherland we mustn't silence the voices that offer a critical analysis or opposing narrative.

The reason for this is because this makes us love our nation, even more, it is not Pakistan's fault; Pakistan is a chunk of Land, it is an identity, it is the fault of our leaders and the people for not wanting change. I completely agree with your rebuke and if nothing else, as parents we should teach our children to be the ideal that our Quaid wanted us all to be.

Thanks buddy. I have hope in Pakistan because of every one of you, my friends, colleagues, brothers all working to make the country better. Right down to the forum members who are keen to do their part.

As for some of the hopeless comments here, I think living away from the land has both its advantages and its disadvantages. Overseas Pakistanis have the opportunity to see the world-the other world, the developed world and set higher benchmarks for Pakistan. Their criticism in a way helps better Pakistan. Which is why I never abuse even some of the worst critics though sometimes their criticism is so heavy it cannot be classified as criticism.

The disadvantage however is overseas Pakistanis or Pakistanis who have renounced their nationality in favor of British, American, Malaysian or other passports is that they lose hope in their past nation. The huge gap in development plays a part and develops notions that are very different from that of a common man who lives in Pakistan surviving on bare minimum but not losing hope. Perhaps it is this difference that is causing me to become a little wary of Syed ali haider though even I have lived outside the country.

But I do believe the loss of hope is greatly unfortunate. I believe once these Pakistanis who are the richest of the lot, lose hope a great battle has been lost. Because these overseas Pakistanis have the means to stabilize the Pakistani economy and other sectors. They just give up and that is a loss for the nation.

 

[BATMAN]

The same people dumping trash and breaking traffic laws---when they get into cantonments--suddenly their habits change---why?

Hello Sir,

My guess, its the sense of appreciation. When we enter a clean and organized country... we keep it clean and behave, without instructions. You see the design and system around you.

Unfortunately, we have become an incompatible state of the world.

I still remember, as a kid my uncle told me Zebra crossing is to cross the road, look right left right (would be left right left in US) and cross!
Today, we need to build overhead bridges and under passes just because we cannot follow Zebra crossing, or perhaps we don't know how to enter and leave a circle!
We need 4 lane broadways, because of unorganized driving habits!
How we expect a foreigner to drive in Pakistan or a foreigner can wander around, without getting killed at Zebra crossing!

I have seen African states, which are far cleaner and organized.

Central and south Punjab can be surely compared with worst African states.

 

[omega supremme]

You Guys Should Visit Kharian cantt far better than big cities i have visited

The cantts are mostly clean because they are more an army property and properly looked after by Army, that's why most civilians try to have a home in Cantt area than in local areas. You have only visited one cantt should try other cantts as well but then you will face some trouble from MP guys, so try to have a address of some military guy living inside.

NOTE: The beauty of a cantt is due to it's roads fresh and marked with signs, secondly cantt is a very peaceful area with very low threat of being robbed even when alone and thirdly the lifestyle of people in cantt just astonishes an outsider even for a civilan who is of that city if he visits the cantt for the first time he'll just be amazed by the area.

 

[haviZsultan]

Rebut and rebuke all anyone wants, the ever-increasing height of the trash piles speaks for true situation, noble words and high hopes notwishstanding, even the odd offer of a clean-up campaign in Multan (which will not go anywhere either).

Now it seems to me you want to be a nuisance on the forum.

This looks like a very stealthy art-form of trolling to me. No offense.

Did you read my post and even attempt to note the wider message? I am a cynic. You should see my posts and my support for minorities or secularism and my ability to say what is wrong is wrong. But all my secularism, my support for minorities comes second to the wider concept of not losing hope in your motherland and giving back to your own society and I have belief in Pakistan.

Try to see it from your own perspective? Don't you want to make America better. Have you complain endlessly or have lost hope in it after the dozen or so wars it has gotten you into and that also only within your lifetime-not counting nuclear bombs tossed at Japan like they were discarded toys? Why do you feel offended when someone accuses it of-lets say war mongering? Do Pakistanis not have the right to do the same. I think this devious form of trolling is very dangerous. It seems like an attempt to make people lose hope. Also you do not qoute the person back and I am also a little worried because I saw a post of yours abusing webmaster, defence.pk and all Pakistanis on an Indian forum named bharat rakshak. And then instead of admitting you are American you claim you have a full knowledge of Pakistan.

@WebMaster

Btw do you know how many innocents are framed on false terror charges on Indian behest in your neighbor Canada. The day they pick you up despite your American cowboy patriotism you will understand that abandoning and abusing your land will not make you an American in their eyes. Every tyrant gets its end.

 

[VCheng]

LOL. Now I am responsible for what is said on other sites too by god knows who?

Can't we remain on topic here?

 

[Mentee]

LOL. Now I am responsible for what is said on other sites too by god knows who?

Can't we remain on topic here?

Lemme make a wild guess , on idf ? by some v-Cheng guy along with his sanghi buddies

 

[Solomon2]

How is it hiding? You should know I am never in favor of hiding our mistakes. Highlighting them is a duty because only by admitting our faults we can fix them. But have you or Solomon ever admitted to faults in America. Criticizing as an outsider is very, very easy.

America has plenty of faults. Some getting worse, some getting mended. And some people suffer from some of the same afflictions some Pakistanis do. Yet this is a forum mostly on Pakistani affairs and the fact that America has faults is used as an escape and excuse by many not to address numerous Pakistani problems. Sweeping problems under the rug does not make them go away; rather, it reinforces the colonial-subject mindset Syed talks about.

 

[VCheng]

America has plenty of faults. Some getting worse, some getting mended. And some people suffer from some of the same afflictions some Pakistanis do. Yet this is a forum mostly on Pakistani affairs and the fact that America has faults is used as an escape and excuse by many not to address numerous Pakistani problems. Sweeping problems under the rug does not make them go away; rather, it reinforces the colonial-subject mindset Syed talks about.

Not only that, but the two additionally preferred favored tactics are "USA does it too" and "But we are still better than India" as mere diversionary tools. For example, neither of those are even remotely related to the topic of this thread, and yet, here we are.

A relevant thread is here:

https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/pakistans-financial-capital-karachi-turned-into-rubbish-bin.481668/

 

[Signalian]

A useful way to get rid of Rubbish.


The woman turning rubbish into homes in Pakistan



Latif has been using plastic to create shelters, reservoirs and mobile toilets. Now, she wants the world to take notice.

‘Bricks’ and raw materials wait to be formed into structures at Gul Bahao’s research centre in Karachi [Faras Ghani/Al Jazeera]
Karachi, Pakistan – Nargis Latif lay on her hospital bed dying.
The doctors had given up on her. Her children and husband were at her side, crying. Shouts of “she’s going, she’s going” and “mummy, don’t die” filled the room.

Latif had experienced complications during labour and, despite being admitted to a reputable hospital in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, the doctors there couldn’t diagnose what was wrong with her, although they suspected it might be blood cancer.

“I can’t even start to tell you how much pain I was in; it was unbearable,” she recalls in vivid detail almost three decades later.

“It was at that time that I reached out to God and asked him to either kill me or to save me, [but] not [to] leave me hanging in the middle. I started crying, and it seemed as [if when] the first tear dropped on the floor, my prayers were answered.”

Latif’s condition gradually started to improve. And she, in turn, started working on the promise she had made to God in the hospital that day – to do something to make the world a better place.

Nargis Latif calls her work a ‘bloody revolution’ and believes it has the potential to change the world [Faras Ghani/Al Jazeera]

Dedicating ‘my life to it’
Burning rubbish is a common sight in Karachi, a city that produces 12,000 tonnes of it a day.

“I used to get very mad when garbage was burned,” Latif explains, remembering a street sweeper who used to burn it in her neighbourhood.

So, as her condition improved, Latif started to research ways of making use of that rubbish.

After a year of research, she created the Gul Bahao (flow the flowers) project.

With her “team of environmentalists”, Latif devises ways of using rubbish to create houses, water reservoirs, fodder for livestock and instant compost.

“This hasn’t been easy,” she says. “I realised I had to dedicate my whole life to it. Once you commit, you can’t back out.”

“It was also a difficult decision because my father was against it. He told me not to get into this, otherwise, I will be destroyed.”

The chandi ghar [silver house] was used as a shelter for those affected by the 2005 earthquake [Faras Ghani/Al Jazeera]
But Latif remained adamant that there was life left in the rubbish that was being disposed of, particularly the plastic.

Gul Bahao started off 22 years ago with an “army” of more than 70 boys from Uzbekistan, who helped Latif collect plastic, vegetable and fruit peels, and other material from all over Karachi.

In 2004, Latif established a research centre on government-owned land in front of some shack homes. She recalls how trucks and minivans would roll out of it in those early days.

Now, the centre is full of unorganised stacks of plastic – and a chandi ghar, a type of shelter that has been used to house those displaced by the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan as well as family members of patients at the Civil Hospital Mithi in the deprived Tharparkar district of the country.

Latif says that since 2005, more than 150 of these structures have been made and delivered all over Pakistan.

Then there are mobile, foldable toilets that she says can cater to those travelling long distances on buses as well as to villagers who may not have toilet facilities in their homes.

Everything the project creates – from shelters to tables, chairs and toilets – consists of waste plastic inside a thermopore shell. The plastic – “virgin”, as Latif calls it to differentiate it from other rubbish – is mostly confectionary wrappers that factory owners have rejected due to printing issues. They form “bricks” that are then tied together to create the finished product. For the pillars of the shelters, the bricks are tied with wooden poles which are fitted into a roughly two-foot deep hole in the ground.

The chairs are sold for 70 rupees ($0.70) while the shelters fetch Gul Bahao around 300-400 rupees ($2.90-$3.80) per square foot.

But, Latif explains, the project is “not a commercial venture, but a research one”.

“We spent over 10 million rupees on this project in 2006 alone. Since then, the expenses have gone down.”

Most of the funding has come from Latif herself or from grants the project has received along the way.

‘Beautiful structures’
Sitting inside one of the chandi ghars, there is a constant flow of air from the early morning breeze. The structure seems sturdy, but it’s hard to tell how well it will withstand the midday summer heat.

Tables and chairs made of plastic wrappers within a thermopore shell [Faras Ghani/Al Jazeera]
“You can make beautiful structures using rejected material. Houses, swimming pools, water reservoirs in areas where there are water issues, little dams even,” Latif explains. “I’ll be damned if people don’t use this to their advantage. One extreme is a wedding banquet, the other a poor man’s hut.

“The plastic inside is not a filling, it’s a technique … You can only make it if you learn how to,” she continues, leaning forward and wagging her index finger. “If you make such bricks, it’s bye-bye to pollution, climate change and the melting glaciers.

“Because you’ve stopped burning garbage and plastic. It will stop getting stuck in drains as well as prevent flooding of roads when it rains.”

Latif is enthusiastic about her work. She has three workers helping her in the research centre – “They will complain to you they don’t get paid on time,” she says – and a manager.

There is a bed made out of plastic waste on the premises where the helpers can relax. For Latif, there are no fixed working hours. If she’s not at the research centre, she is at an exhibition promoting the shelters or at a meeting seeking interest or grants.

But not everyone shares her enthusiasm and the organisation is struggling. The 70-person team she once had is no more. Now there are just seven left. Over the past two decades, Gul Bahao has spent $90,000. Latif doesn’t say how much it has made.

Convincing the public that the construction material is clean has been difficult, Latif explains.

“People say this is made from garbage, and we don’t want to live or sit on garbage. But this is clean material, especially the plastic. It’s difficult to remove that thinking and perception,” she says.

Finding funding is another problem, and Latif must spend much of her time looking for the money to keep the project going.

“Nobody is willing to give us funds because nobody thinks highly of research here. In the past, companies used to give us paper, plastic, oil, cardboard and metal and we used to sell those and fund this project from the money we got.

“We never got a lot of cash funds, but mostly [get paid] in kind favours.”

Dawood from Quetta joined Gul Bahao a couple of years ago and can make as many as 10 to 12 chairs a day [Faras Ghani/Al Jazeera]
‘An environmentalist’s dream’
The Chandi Ghars are also aimed at the nomads in Pakistan’s Tharparkar district, which suffers from extreme poverty, a shortage of rainfall and inadequate water supplies.

“Those families, instead of living in mud houses, can benefit from these shelters. Once the water runs out, they can easily pack up and move with their livestock to a place with water and farming facilities. They won’t need to construct their mud houses from scratch. This would also reduce infections and diseases that spread because of dirt and mud,” Latif explains.

As Latif excitedly prepares for a presentation of Gul Bahao’s work, she insists that this technology “will revolutionise the world, just like the steam engine and the mobile phone”.

Those are big ambitions that have yet to be fulfilled, but Latif is adamant that her ideas can benefit the world – where the annual consumption of plastic has increased from around five million tonnes in the 1950s to nearly 100-million tonnes now – and, in so doing, help her keep the promise she made to God from her hospital bed all those years ago.

“It’s an environmentalist’s dream,” she says. “The world will be clean of pollution and plastic bags because we’re putting them to good use.”

The large gaps in the walls not only serve as windows but also stop the structure from being destroyed by strong winds or storms [Faras Ghani/Al Jazeera]

http://www.peesnews.com/lifestyle/the-woman-turning-rubbish-into-homes-in-pakistan/

 

[truthseer]

The reason there is little trash in America is because they have a system. We have missed out on nearly 400 years of development under the British, and find ourselves in a modern world with an antique mindset of the 1600's. We will have our own version of the Renaissance one day.....

 

[VCheng]

USA generates absolutely humongous mountains of trash every single day. But there is a system of proper pickup and disposal that works very well for most of it, paid for by the generators of the trash.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

USA generates absolutely humongous mountains of trash every single day. But there is a system of proper pickup and disposal that works very well for most of it, paid for by the generators of the trash.

I'm sure we generate far more trash per person than any other country on the planet.

http://www.treehugger.com/environme...istics-about-americans-and-their-garbage.html

 

[VCheng]

I'm sure we generate far more trash per person than any other country on the planet.

http://www.treehugger.com/environme...istics-about-americans-and-their-garbage.html

All the numbers and charts anyone wants on trash:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/07/trash-charts-world-bank-report-economy



USA is up there, but at least makes some effort to deal with it too.

 

[MastanKhan]

Hi,

As I stated----property values in Multan are outrageous---. I am talking about communities where the houses are in the 1.5 crore - to 3 to 4 crore ruppees---ie 150000 dollars to 300000 dollars 400000 dollars range---.

The streets are narrow and are broken---trash heaps everywhere---stench of rotten food and trash is over whelming---and the residents have no concern and careless about cleanliness---. Dirt filth and trash---that is all you see.

City of Multan is like Riverside california---like sacramento---like stockton---like Fresno california---.

In those cities where the housing range is 150K dollars and above---you don't see any trash---the housings in the 300 k and above are clean as a whistle---.

As I got out of Los Angeles international airport---I was again shocked at how clean the streets were---got on the 105 freeway---then on 605 freeway---then on 91 freeway---then on 57 freeway---then on 60 freeway to 215 freeway on my way home---the freeways were clean---no trash---the streets in my small town were clean---no trash on the streets---air was cleaner---.

I was only out of the country of 34 days---but what an experience---.

Loot and plunder has destroyed my motherland---.

 

[The Choice]

"Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” [ The Noble Quran 13:11]