A people’s resilience

Many rich democracies try to provide cradle-to-grave services to their citizens. From giving stipends to lactating mothers to giving pensions to senior citizens, governments try to ensure that citizens who aren’t able to help themselves are taken care of.

Our government neither has the resources nor the ability to undertake such a momentous task. But fortunately we have a more efficient form of social safety net: the family.

We may not have state-sponsored day-care and learning centres for toddlers but we have ‘nanis’ and ‘dadis’ and, while we don’t have old-people’s homes, we have children whose pride is to take care of their elderly parents.

But the family only works for middle-class and rich people. There is within our midst significant poverty that leaves people unable to feed, house or educate themselves or their children. Sadly, despite the Benazir Income Support Programme having a budget of about Rs125 billion, and some other state-run programmes for the poor, our governments aren’t even close to taking care of the poor in our society. This is where men like Maulana Bashir Farooqi Qadri and his Saylani Welfare Trust come in.

Maulana Sahib was a middle-class businessman. But taking care only of his own family was not enough for him. He was far more ambitious. So he made an employee a partner in his business and gave him the business to run and he devoted himself fulltime to the service of humanity.

On May 5, 1999, he started the Saylani Trust. Today his organisation feeds 63,000 people daily. He has free meals served daily in Karachi, Hyderabad, Faisalabad, Thatta, Chiniot, Quetta and Rawalpindi. And on the Turkish border with Syria and in Bangladesh where Rohingya Muslims are staying as refugees.

Every month Saylani trust gives free medical attention to over 50,000 patients. This includes free consultation with doctors, including specialists, free X-rays, lab tests, hospital stays and medicines. Everything is free.

In Karachi Saylani runs 12 Mother-and-Child centres where moms can go and are either treated there or referred to some specialist facility.

Saylani also runs schools in Karachi and Hyderabad where 10,000 students study and also in Tharparkar where an additional 5000 students are enrolled. These schools, besides giving basic education as prescribed by the government, also teach Quranic Nazra. Of course, there is no fee in the schools and in addition students are given all books and study material for free as well.

For the last few years, Saylani has entered the field of IT and Artificial Intelligence training and now has 4000 students in its Karachi and Faisalabad campuses.

They have installed and run over 50 reverse osmosis water purification plants across Pakistan, including 30 in Faisalabad alone. There are many more things Saylani does, from housing to vocational training.

But here’s the best part. For an organisation with a budget of Rs10 million daily, they do no organised fundraising. People come and give them the money they need. In addition, so many people donate in kind. Many pharmaceutical companies see the great work they do and donate medicines. Many senior doctors donate a few hours of their time weekly to treat patients for free. They take no money from any foreign government or foreign organisation.

Saylani tries to spend the money they collect from each city in that city itself. Of course, some money flows from Karachi to other areas. But then Karachi not only has disproportionate wealth in Pakistan but also a greater mindset for charitable giving. Yet more money will allow them to expand their services.

Every political party in Pakistan has made statements about the Baldia factory fire in which about 300 workers were killed. But through a programme called Kifayat, Saylani is taking care of the affected families. To this day, Saylani takes cares of their food, utilities, health and education bills. It insists that children under 16 attend school and those older may either continue their education or learn a trade. Besides these 250 families, there are 15000 other families that Saylani looks after.

In these difficult economic times people often ask me how I see the economic prospects of Pakistan. I tell them that I remain bullish on Pakistan. Pakistan is a very resilient country and we will be just fine. To me, Pakistan’s economy is like a sturdy and dependable car. Right now we are going through a bumpy road with lots of sudden brakes and acceleration but eventually we will get on the motorway and have a smooth ride in the right direction.

A series of economic decisions made during the last few months by the PTI, including the volatility and depreciation of the rupee, increase in gas and power tariffs, imposition of new indirect taxes, etc mean that we will have higher inflation than we have had during the last few years. We have already seen record increases and perhaps will see further increase in interest rates. This will slow down industrial and economic growth and resultantly also slow down employment growth. So the next couple of years will be tough.

But there are also bright lights on the economic horizon. The recent reduction in oil prices means that we will save perhaps as much as $3 billion in our imported fuel bill this year. The imposition of US tariffs on Chinese products might mean that more of our exports will become competitive. Also, the large depreciation of rupee will, over time, result in an increase in exports and a tampering of imports. (It’s a moot point now to say that a much lower depreciation may have also done the trick). But what’s most important is that we now have in Pakistan the basic infrastructure for economic growth, an infrastructure that was built by the PML-N over the last five years.

A recent report by Moody’s has expressed confidence in our economy. It based its optimism on the much-improved law and order situation, the elimination of loadshedding and the building of infrastructure, including as part of CPEC. So even international rating agencies see that, thanks to the PML-N’s efforts, Pakistan today has the tools to grow out of its difficulties.

What is important now is that investment activity in Pakistan continues and businesses don’t adopt a wait-and-see attitude. This is why it is important for the government to give certainty to businesses. The sudden shutting down of gas supplies or the hike in utility bills, contrary to pledges made to the industry, are not conducive to a positive business environment. It is important that the government does what it says and hence steadies the economic conditions.

As soon as that is done, we will see a change in business sentiment and Pakistan will hopefully again get back on the path of growth.

However, what makes Pakistan resilient even in these difficult times is people like Maulana Bashir Farooqi. As long as Pakistan produces sons like him, we will always be fine.

The writer has served as federalminister for finance, revenue andeconomic Affairs.

Twitter: @MiftahIsmail