A consensus was reached on code of ethics regarding collecting hides of sacrificial animals in Karachi during the three days of Eidul Azha, here on Monday. In this regard a meeting was held at the Central Police Office, attended by Karachi CCPO Tariq Jamil, DIG (operations) Karachi Mushtaque Shah and all town police officers of the city. The meeting also reviewed special security measures on the Eid days.
Adviser to the Sindh Chief Minister, Mumtaz Hamid represented the Khidmat-e-Khaliq Committee in the meeting, while MPA Nasrullah Shajeeh and Naib Amir Karachi Jammat-e-Islami Muhammad Aslam Mujahid represented his party.
Iftikhar Bhatti of the Sunni Tahreek, Muhammad Yaqoob Attari of the Daawat-e-Islami, Ilyas Ahmed and Faisal Salfi of Jamait Ghurba-e-Ahle Hadees and Faisal Edhi of the Edhi Foundation also attended the meeting.
The participants agreed to follow a moral code, which said that a prior permission in writing from the Home Department or the DCO was necessary for collecting sacrificial hides.
The permission will only be given to the registered parties or organisations that had signed the code and strictly followed it, the meeting said.
Besides, there will be no camps for collecting hides. Nobody will be allowed to make the announcements from vehicle-mounted loudspeakers, mosques, religious schools and offices, it said.
These bans were meant to ensure that donating hides at free will being the right of those who sacrifice animals. They should have a freedom to use their right without any outside pressure.
The code said that it was not permitted to go home to home in search of the hides. In every locality, there are mosques, religious schools and public welfare institutions and people may voluntarily deposit the sacrificial hides with them.
It will be a must for the workers of hide-collecting bodies to carry with them their national identity card, a card of their organisation and a copy of the permission of the Home Department while shifting hides from one place to the other. Otherwise, the law enforcing agencies will have the right to confiscate the hides collected by them.
The meeting further decided to provide overall security at the places of hide collection and to vehicles used for their shifting. The concerned organisations have to provide the details in this regard to the respective town police officer by January 20, it added.
The display of arms, including licensed ones, sticks, iron bars, etc, will be banned during the three days of the Eid. The police officials will check the vehicles and motorcycles to ensure that the imposed condition was being fulfilled.
All hide-collecting bodies were bound to instruct their workers to fully co-operate with the law enforcers. If they failed to produce the written permission, or violated the moral code in anyway, a legal action will be taken against them and hides collected by them will be confiscated.
The CCPO Karachi told the meeting that special security and traffic arrangements were being made in the whole city to ensure peace during the Eid prayer. Every town has devised its own strategy in this regard and extra police force were being provided to the town according to their needs, he said.
The meeting was told that security measures to the Eid markets and animal markets were also being beefed up. During the Eid days, every town will establish a control room, supervised by the concerned TPO to ensure security measures.
A control room will also be established at the office of the DIG (Operations) Karachi, to receive information about any untoward situation and take a rapid action. The telephone numbers of this control room will be 9201196, 9201197 and 15.