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Manmohan
Singh's birthplace in Pakistan lacks basic amenities
Sunday February 13, 2011 10:50:58 AM,
IANS
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Islamabad: Villagers
of Gah Begal in Pakistan's Punjab province, the birth place of
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, have been living sans
electricity and other basic amenities.
Despite being declared as model village during the tenure of
former president Pervez Musharraf, villagers complaint that all
developmental programmes have been halted, the Dawn newspaper
reported.
Millions of rupees have been allocated for the construction of
schools, a vocational training centre and a veterinary hospital,
but the school buildings remain half-built while the veterinary
hospital and vocational centre still need staff to be recruited.
Thanks to an intitiative by Manmohan Singh, officials from The
Energy Resource Institute of India (TERI) installed solar street
lights, distributed solar lamps to each family, installed solar
geysers, bio-gas plants and dry wood gasification system for mass
cooking.
Indian engineers also set a geyser for the small mosque of the
village with 228 households and a population of 2,000 people, the
Pakistani daily said.
Yet Pakistani experts have not played any role in generating
alternative energy. The smokeless wood gasification system has not
been working but no Pakistani authority has so far shown any
interest in fixing it, the paper said.
Ghulam Murtaz, a teacher in Gah Primary School, showed Singh's
report cards of Class 2 and 3. The shcool has also preserved its
admission register which shows Singh got admission in Class 1 and
his serial number 187.
Murtaza's father was Singh's classmate in the school.
"Teaching at this school is a matter of dual pride for me because
my father was a fellow of Singh here," Murtaza was quoted as
saying by Dawn.
Raja Ashiq Hussain, the former Nazim (village head), still has a
letter composed and signed in Urdu in which the Indian prime
minister wrote about the developmental schemes for his birth
place.
Hussain also visited India with a Pakistani delegation to
experience the local government system of India.
The village also saw the riots which erupted after the partition
of India and Pakistan in 1947. But before independence, Gah was a
centre of economic activity due to the presence of Hindu and Sikh
businessmen who made up around 50 percent of the total population.
Hussian describes the warm sentiments shared by the people of
Pakistan and India during the tenure of the previous government,
when many Indian delegates used to visit Gah weekly. The villagers
still cling to the hope that Singh will one day come back to his
childhood home. Or perhaps Pakistani authorities will wake up and
revive the work once promised to these villagers.
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