Youth education on vote value, governance urged

08 Feb, 2008

Speakers at the conference on Thursday stressed the need for educating youth on the value of vote, good governance and about their rights and responsibilities towards politics and society.
These views were expressed by the various speakers at the conference on "Good Governance and Rule of Law", organised by the Transparency International - Pakistan (TI-P) at a local hotel.
Speakers include former justice Dr Ghous Muhammad, TI-P Chairman Syed Adil Gilani, TI-P Executive Director Saad Rashid, Professor Dr Moonis Ahmar, chairman, International Relation Department, Karachi University; Professor Dr Tanvir Khalid, Wajid Jawad, chairman, Financial Post, and Professor Dr Mansoor Akbar Kundi, dean, English Department, University of Balochistan.
They said that sustainable development would not be achieved unless the collective efforts are not made to prevent the culture of hypocrisy, greed, and indifferences in the society.
They said that awareness of rights and responsibilities in politics and society should be created by society representative organisations, which would help in making a flawless judiciary system and effective civil society as well.
They cited that out of total 160 million population only 0.3 million people are educated in the country, hence it is a prime responsibility for them to play their part in transformation process of a country towards democratic and developed nation. They stressed that society representatives to indoctrinate new generation for the betterment of the society, however, due to unplanned and improper motivation; last five generations were not fruitful for the country.
"The country can not bear more generation losses, therefore, it is a need of the hour to commence collective efforts for convincing current generation in the good faith of Pakistan, which will definitely help eliminate corruption, anarchy and poor law and order situation in the society", they maintained.
They said that influential interference in judiciary matters pushed the country into a worse economy crisis, adding to establish transparent legislative set-up where rules and laws must be developed and implemented without any discrimination.
Judicial independence, integrity and accountability must be enhanced to improve the credibility of justice system, which not only mean to free judicial proceeding with political influence, judges must also subject to disciplinary rules, limited immunity and a code of judicial conduct to ensure justice is served, they said. They stressed the need for effective implementation of Procurement Rules - 2004 in the private and public sector to eliminate discrimination in accountability of civil and defence departments and urged judiciary to take decisions without any differences.
They suggested that youth should be facilitated by providing platform to address their problems and suggestions for establishing good governance and added that networks of knowledge should be created for sharing and learning on governance and anti-corruption issues. A large number of people from different walks of life and students from different universities, including Karachi University, Sir Syed University, Szabist and NED University, participated in the conference.

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