Articles and letters may be edited for the purposes of clarity and space. They are published in good faith with a view to enlightening all the stakeholders. However, the contents of these writings may not necessarily match the views of the newspaper.
Sugar relief
by Judiciary
I cannot help but thank Islamabad High Court for their intervention while listening to an appeal by sugar manufacturers, fixing interim retail price of sugar at Rs 70 per kg, although it was being sold for Rs 85-90 per kg. Similarly, Peshawar High Court has ordered Petroleum Distribution companies to restore normal supply within 3 days.
There exist several hundred bureaucrats, numerous departments, regulatory bodies and an elected executive, all paid for by tax-payers, to provide citizens basic rights, justice, security of life and property and provision of consumer items at affordable prices. What purpose do all these state paraphernalia serve, if their failure to perform designated tasks, by design or incompetence, forces courts to intervene in public interest. There will then follow a campaign against judicial activism.
The Federal Government and NAB have been pursuing so-called sugar mafia scam for several months, during which the retail price of sugar rose by almost Rs.30 to 40 per kg. A Commission was formed and an FIA team appointed to investigate. It held several high-level meetings and all this while sugar prices kept on escalating although initial investigations had established cost of manufacturing was approximately Rs 52 per Kg.
As if this was not enough, PM ordered relief, by lowering petroleum retail prices for the second consecutive month. As per SOP, Petroleum Distribution companies maintain 10-day supply reserves. Yet fuel was not available at pumps. As usual Petroleum ministry in hibernation, finally woke up under pressure and imposed a fine of few crores although profits from hoarding would be ten to twenty times the penalty, if fuel prices are increased in July. Cigarette manufacturers have for decades been evading tax payment on actual production by hiring high profile lobbyists on their board, spreading cancer amongst youth.
MALIK TARIQ ALI
Lahore
What is ionic?
Ionic is an HTML5 mobile app development framework targeted at building hybrid mobile apps. Hybrid apps are essentially small websites running in a browser shell in an app that have access to the native platform layer. Hybrid apps have many benefits over pure native apps, specifically in terms of platform support, speed of development and access to 3rd party code. Think of Ionic as the front-end UI framework that handles all of the look and feel and UI interactions your app needs in order to be compelling. Kind of like “Bootstrap for Native,” but with support for a broad range of common native mobile components, slick animations, and beautiful design.
Unlike a responsive framework, Ionic comes with very native-styled mobile UI elements and layouts that you’d get with a native SDK on iOS or Android but didn’t really exist before on the web. Ionic also gives you some opinionated but powerful ways to build mobile applications that eclipse existing HTML5 development frameworks. Since Ionic is an HTML5 framework, it needs a native wrapper like Cordova or PhoneGap in order to run as a native app.
HAIDER ALI
Murree
Memory loss
You were rushing to leave the house this morning and forgot again where you last left your car keys. You’ve been wondering if it’s time to worry. Just how do you tell the difference between the normal memory problems and something worse, like dementia or Alzheimer’s disease?
Worldwide there are 47.5 million people with dementia, which describes a group of symptoms that affect cognitive tasks like memory and reasoning. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia in people over the age of 65 years old. We all have moments when it becomes hard to recall some detail like someone’s name .
Forgetting for a moment why you went into a room or misplacing items like your car keys in a common place is a sign that your brain didn’t secure the details. You may remember part of the memory but not all of it, or you may get some of the minor details wrong. Problems such as forgetting things you just learned, needing to have things repeated frequently, repeating yourself frequently, or requiring memory aides and notes to remember simple tasks when you never had to before
Talk to your doctor if you or someone you know have noticed changes in your memory, especially if accompanied by other signs such as challenges with planning and problem solving, difficulty with words and visual relationships of things, poor judgment or mood changes. While some causes of dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease are progressive, which means the symptoms get worse over time, others are reversible, which means they could be fixed or halted if caught early enough. And if you are starting to get a dementia, knowing early may give you one last chance to make plans for your future care and living situation while you can still make good decisions.
SAQIB ISHAQ
Chakothi AJK
Pandemic
and education
COVID-19 pandemic has affected educational systems worldwide. Governments have ordered institutions for online teaching. While many universities and schools have started online classes, a majority of educational institutes in Pakistan do not have the system for distance learning. Only a few universities have proper virtual education facilities. Others are partially equipped. Many teachers are not even trained. Richer countries are better prepared to move to online learning strategies, although with a lot of effort and challenges for teachers and parents. In middle-income and poorer countries, the situation is very mixed. Many children do not have internet connectivity and a laptop at home.
It’s a challenging task for the government to reopen schools and colleges during this coronavirus pandemic, but the pressure is increasing every day. The mission of all education systems is the same. It is to overcome the learning crisis we were already living and respond to the pandemic we are all facing. The challenge today is to reduce as much as possible the negative impact this pandemic will have on learning and schooling and build on this experience to get back on a path of faster improvement in learning.
MAIRA NADEEM
Rawalpindi
New meddling
An American woman Cynthia David Ritchie has levelled serious allegations against late Benazir Bhutto and three other PPP’s leaders. Whether these blames are true or not it is clear that this blame game is only wastage of time because the whole nation is facing a crisis due to Coronavirus, majority of people are worried for their livelihood, therefore, it is difficult for the woman to achieve her goals. Therefore the campaign of character assassination is only called an untimely rag.
Here a question arises that why she remained silent for nine years. If she had no trust on our system of justice why did she not move to her homeland? If she had told her tale of woe to American press at that time her government would have taken notice and raised the issue with Pakistan. But she did not do so. We are not interested in questions – what is her background? Why she has been living in Pakistan for so long and why and how she established relations with political figures. Our point of concern is that if the way is being paved to discredit politicians by using foreign elements, no one will be safe in the future. This is a new type of foreign interference and our enemies can use it as instrument to defame our country.
For instance, if our enemies like India and Israel launch a media campaign against our leaders through such accusers than what will be our position in international community?
ASIM IQBAL
Rawalpindi
