Halal food authority?
IT is really a task cut out for the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Taking a decision on which food is forbidden and which is halal should not be the responsibility of the Ministry of Science and Technology. Yet, the latter ministry is now seeking the creation of a ‘halal food authority’ that would be empowered to ban the import and sale of foods it believes may contain ingredients prohibited by religion. The fact that the ministry took the matter before a National Assembly standing committee is evidence that the officers running its affairs are completely out of ideas when it comes to the promotion of science and technology in the country. Surely, it would have made far more sense for them to have pointed out the deficiencies in science education in Pakistan, or to have discussed the absence of research. Even if the ministry preferred to focus on food quality, there are areas where its input would have been appreciated. For example, it could have concerned itself with food safety.
The country’s waterways are heavily contaminated with pollutants of various kinds. Industrial effluent and raw sewage are used for irrigation purposes in many parts of the country, and negatively affect agricultural produce. Then, there are entire districts that have a high incidence of hepatitis from contaminated water. Any government would be alarmed at the potential health risk to its citizens. Not so the officers of the science and technology ministry; along with some parliamentarians, they have chosen not to dwell on such unpalatable truths. Once again, the question of halal food should be left to the religious affairs ministry, with their peers in commerce being empowered to take action. It is strange that the matter was referred by the National Assembly speaker to the Standing Committee on Science and Technology.
The ministry concerned would be doing everyone a favour by focusing on its mandate to promote research and technology in the country, instead of delving into faith-based issues.
Vaccine management
THE challenges to success in the battle against polio are significant, well-known and have landed the country at the centre of international concern. Under fire, state functionaries tend to cite in their own defence the resistance to the vaccine by certain quarters, the violence visited on polio teams, etc. To an extent, they are right. But if that was the whole picture — if the poor showing in the effort to vaccinate children was not due also to the entrenched incapacities of the state and its health programmes — then there would be visible success in the push against other diseases, particularly the nine childhood diseases covered under the government-run Expanded Programme on Immunisation. Sadly enough, that is not the case. Between 2013 and 2014, the World Health Organisation and Unicef jointly conducted a survey of 151 vaccine sites, including a national store, sub-national stores, lowest distribution levels and service points.
The report presents a dismal picture: improvements are needed in most areas of the vaccine and supply management system, and only in one area — vaccine and commodity arrival procedures — does the country meet the required standards. In all other areas of an effective vaccination management programme, from storage temperatures to capacity, from buildings and equipment to stock management and effective distribution, performance is weak enough to raise concern. According to the report, vaccine distribution, stock management and information management are areas in which the country’s showing is especially poor. This is hardly surprising. In almost every department, the government is struggling to effectively manage its meagre resources and the health sector is no different.
Yet, perhaps more than several other areas of endeavour, this in particular merits urgent attention. With public-sector hospitals and infirmaries woefully inadequate to meet the needs of the population, there can simply be no excuse to not be making all-out efforts to ensure that children do not fall sick as a result of preventable diseases. The going won’t be easy, but measures can be taken, such as the suggestion made by the WHO-Unicef report that solar power systems be instituted where necessary to maintain the cold chain for vaccines. It is not too much to say that the issue goes right to the heart of the country’s future. That children now go to school under the shadow of guns makes for dismal enough projections; but ill health and death through preventable diseases stalk millions more.
Protection for military courts
IN a strange, mostly unexplained twist, President Mamnoon Hussain has promulgated an ordinance further revising the recently amended Army Act to ostensibly aid the functioning of military courts by allowing for trials in camera, ie without the presence of the public or the media, and over video link if necessary. The idea, according to a special assistant of the prime minister who handles legal matters, is to enhance security for presiding officers, military prosecutors, witnesses and defence lawyers by shielding their identity from the public and the media. While that may seem like a sensible idea — and only at first blush — it is quite incredible that already the law dealing with military courts is being amended in such a clandestine manner and without any debate. The need for a presidential ordinance — a legislative tool that has been used in the past to undermine parliamentary democracy — points to either one of two problems.
Military courts were either mooted in haste and only now are the real-world impediments to their functioning becoming apparent, hence the need to tweak the law. Or the government and the military which demanded such courts do not feel obliged to maintain any level of transparency in the operation of these courts and are now confident enough to introduce changes that essentially seal off their functioning from any kind of public and media scrutiny. Consider the great irony of this latest presidential ordinance: if special courts and anti-terrorism courts had been given the same protections (in-camera proceedings and video links to protect identities of prosecutors, judges and witnesses), the same urgent resources and the same level of attention by the senior-most state functionaries, perhaps the need for military courts would not have been felt in the first place. With this latest presidential ordinance, it appears that the government and military officials ultimately do want to create a parallel judicial system — a closed-off system of courts where public scrutiny is minimal, or even non-existent, and everything is justified in the name of the national interest and protecting the people.
That criticism is not unjustified. Military courts were mooted as a very narrow and very limited solution to a very serious problem: hardcore terrorists and terrorist masterminds who needed to be convicted and remain convicts in a broken criminal justice system. Already though there are suggestions in various quarters, usually in response to an unforeseen and undesirable event, that the scope of military courts be expanded. Perhaps the senator who suggested getting military courts involved in the World Cup cricketing debacle of the Pakistani team was only being facetious or spoke in mock frustration, but it has already been seen how voices have called for military courts to deal with Karachi law-and-order woes. Military courts must not become the new normal — and clandestine, unexplained changes to the law must be resisted.
Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2015