JEDDAH, 31 August 2005 — The Pakistan Repatriation Council (PRC) has called on charitable organizations to help the stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh and urged Islamabad to reactivate the Rabita Trust and begin the repatriation of the stranded people.
Paying tributes to Nasim Khan, the leader of the stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh, who passed away in Dhaka on Sunday, the PRC said Khan’s death had created a vacuum that would be difficult to fill.
Khan, who was the chief of the Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committee (SPGRC), worked persistently for the cause of repatriation and rehabilitation of Pakistanis languishing in Bangladesh camps for over three decades.
The 83-year-old veteran leader was a worker in the Pakistan movement. Khan met President Pervez Musharraf in June 2002 and briefed him on the plight of the stranded people. Musharraf promised to consider the issue sympathetically.
Last year, Khan met Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, former secretary-general of the Muslim World League and sought his help in resolving the issue.
Khan suffered a series of heart attacks — first in 1992, second in 2002 and third on July 26, 2005. But despite his serious condition, he was not provided proper treatment. The SPGRC and PRC urged the government of Pakistan several times to arrange for his treatment in Pakistan since he was not getting proper treatment in Bangladesh.
The PRC has appealed to Pakistani charitable organizations including Jamaat-e-Islami, Muttaheda Qaumi Movement, Edhi Trust, Ansar Burney Trust, to provide food, medicines and other basic amenities to the stranded Pakistanis who are in desperate need of relief.
The International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), Islamic Development Bank and the International Committee of Red Cross are involved in charitable work there with IDB providing sacrificial meat to some 5,000 stranded families in the camps every year, but Pakistani organizations have not bothered to help their own people.
PRC office-bearers Ehsanul Haque, Hamid Islam Khan, Naseem Sehar, M. Riaz Malik, Shoa-un-Nabi. Maqboolur Abbasi, Airz Monawar, Farhan Siddiqui and others have appealed to Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to reactivate the Rabita Trust and start the process of repatriation and rehabilitation of stranded Pakistanis.
