Govt. failed to adopt flood protection measures: JI Shoora

Lahore: The central Shoora of the Jamaat e Islami, Pakistan, has expressed deep grief over the heavy losses of life and property caused by the floods and deplored that the government had failed to make necessary steps to protect the masses from the calamity.

A resolution adopted by the Shoora stressed upon the rulers to adopt an effective strategy to stop India from building dams on the Pakistani rivers and enforce an effective flood warning system. It urged the government to lodge protest with New Delhi over the sudden release of flood water and take up the matter with the international forums. It also demanded implementation of   the report of the Flood Commission, 2010 and setting up a judicial commission to look into the government lapses behind the recent and the current year floods. It demanded immediate and adequate compensation to the affected families for the losses of life, property and crops.

The JI Shoora expressed concern over the dilly dallying of the governments on holding local bodies’ elections and termed it a deviation from the constitution and against the national interest. It said the democracy in the country was a hostage of self seeking and corrupt politicians, feudal lords, vaderas and capitalists, and termed it the root cause of the present political ailments.

The Shoora expressed the hope that the Khyber P. government would ensure a transparent local government elections to serve as a model for the other provinces.  It stressed upon the governments in the Punjab and Sindh to adopt the system of direct voting for local bodies instead of show of hand or indirect voting in accordance with the High Court orders.  It stressed that the entire process of elections right from the delimitation of the constituencies up to the  polling should be handed over to the Election Commission instead of the bureaucracy.

Through another resolution, the Shoora noted that comprehensive electoral reforms were essential for restoring the masses confidence in the election process. It said that all the political parties had been complaining of massive rigging in the 2013 elections but they had decided to accept the results only to continue the democratic process. It also called for making the Election Commission fully autonomous, enforcement of the articles 62 and 63 of the constitution at the time of scrutiny of the candidatures, controlling the election expenses, fixing of time limit for  deciding the election appeals, and adoption of the Bio-metric system ad the use of Electoral voting machine.