Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar has called upon the country’s ulema to play an active role in eradication of polio.
Addressing the National Ulema Conference here on Thursday, Prime Minister Kakar urged the nation to get their children vaccinated to save them from polio virus. He said saving children from Polio is our collective responsibility.
Appreciating the role of Ulema, the prime minister asked them to back the government in eradicating polio from the country. He said that we should learn from spiritual experience. “The people, who call polio vaccine un-Islamic are ill-fated. You have to stand with us against such people. This is our collective fight. We owe it to our future generation,” the prime minister said.
Attended by the Ulema from different schools of thought, cabinet members, diplomats and donors, the conference featured the adoption of a declaration that rejected the baseless propaganda against the polio vaccine and assured the Ulema’s all-out support to the government in its fight against the crippling virus.
The prime minister thanked the donors and supporters on behalf of the entire nation for their assistance to Pakistan in its fight against polio, reiterating the country’s resolve to eliminate the disease without showing any laxity.
“I feel ashamed when I see a polio-crippled child because we put him in a situation that could have been avoided,” he remarked. He urged the Ulema to follow the guiding Islamic principle of probing before believing any notion in the case of polio vaccine as well as it would enhance the effectiveness of their message from the pulpit.
“Don’t our children have a right to live a healthy life and enjoy Allah’s blessings as others do? This is their fundamental human right. Their right is our responsibility,” Prime Minister Kakar said. He said the real challenge was to convey the message to pulpits in the remote areas and at the grassroots level.
Coming to the Gaza situation and the killing of around 9,000 children by Israeli forces, he called it a sheer failure of humanity as instead of being declared a criminal, the killer was claiming to be a leader.
