EDITORIAL: The National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) has unveiled its fact-finding report on “Unequal Citizens: Ending Systemic Discrimination against Minorities”. Supported by the European Union, the report highlights discrimination with reference to government job advertisement and the treatment of sanitary workers.
Advertisements for low-paid BPS-1 to BPS-4 jobs explicitly invite applications only from non-Muslims (read Christians) mostly for sweeping, toilet and gutter cleaning work. There are many heartbreaking stories of half-naked sanitary workers descending into gutters without safety gear to unclog them, only to fall unconscious and die after inhaling poisonous gases. This amounts to inhuman treatment of the poor and the powerless, which has no place in any decent society.
The Commission has suggested several rectification measures, including an immediate ban on discriminatory advertisements, transparency in the number of minority posts filled across each basic pay scale. And equally if not more important, replacement of manual unclogging of gutters with machines - as is the practice in other countries— fair wages, social security, and healthcare cover for all sanitary workers.
These are all important recommendations but ensuring implementation is quite another matter. For his part, Human Rights Minister Riaz Hussain Pirzada said that his ministry had taken immediate action and that letters had gone out to chief secretaries of the provinces, directing them to ensure protection of minorities’ rights in line with international obligations and constitutional guarantees.
The directive should have been more specific than that. For, those at the helm in the provinces are well aware of their legal obligations, yet have no qualms about ignoring them. It also needs to be said that while the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) report is focused on discriminatory treatment meted out to a particular minority community in government jobs, well-educated members of other minorities face discrimination as well as ostracisation.
In fact, not long ago, no less a person than the son-in-law of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and spouse of PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz, Capt. Safdar (retd), stood up in the National Assembly to deliver a virulent tirade against a much-persecuted minority community, demanding that a list be drawn of those employed in government services, in particular the armed forces, and thrown out from their jobs.
He also took issue with renaming of the Quaid-i-Azam University’s physics centre after Prof Abdus Salam, the country’s first Nobel laureate, because of his faith.
In his keynote address at the event, Chief Justice of the Islamabad High Court Athar Minallah mentioned that three “ideal judges” in the judiciary are from minority. It is the obligation of the state, he emphasised, to encourage, cultivate and promote diversity, adding that human rights violations occur due to absence of rule of law.
He also pointed out, regretfully of course, that although the president and governors are obligated to submit reports, every year, on the status of implementation of “Principles of Policy” of the Constitution, yet this obligation has never been fulfilled by any president or governor.
No wonder then that people like Nawaz Sharif’s son-in-law feel free to make bigoted remarks in the country’s highest legislative forum, in blatant contradiction to the nation’s founding father Quaid-i-Azam’s vision for Pakistan as laid down in his seminal speech in the Constituent Assembly. This country being where it is today, it badly needs a course correction. For that, civil society and the media must play a proactive role.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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