JEDDAH: The Jeddah-based Pakistan Repatriation Council (PRC) put on record the services of prominent Pakistani poet Jamiluddin Aali at a condolence meeting held in Jeddah.

PRC Convener Ehsanul Haque, who hosted the meeting, Hamid Islam Khan, Azeez Ahmad and Shamsuddin Altaf highlighted Aali’s contribution to the cause of Pakistanis stranded in Bangladesh over the decades. Aali died in Pakistan last week.

Aali attended PRC’s events in Jeddah in 1994 and 1995 in which he urged the Pakistani government to take concrete measures for the repatriation and rehabilitation of countrymen stranded in Bangladesh.

He praised the role of Muslim World League (MWL) in extending financial support for their settlement under the Rabita Trust fund, a joint venture project of MWL and the government of Pakistan, signed by its late President Ziaul Haque and Abdullah Omar Nasseef, then the secretary general of MWL in July 1988.

He presided over two seminars in Karachi organized by PRC in which he urged Pakistan’s president and prime minister as well as the chief minister of Punjab to arrange rehabilitation of stranded Pakistanis as per the mandate of Rabita Trust. The trust had the mandate for arranging the necessary fund.

Aali wrote several articles to highlight miseries of the stranded Pakistanis. In one article he discussed whether Pakistan preferred to call itself a careless nation by denying the citizenship rights of stranded Pakistanis. He challenged anyone who denied the rights of the stranded Pakistanis to come and debate with him in any media or platform. He also wrote the preface for PRC’s Hisar magazine.

Aali was an admirer of the late Naseem Khan, SPGRC founder. In his column, he praised the late Majeed Nizami for creating a special fund, Nawa-e-Waqt fund, for alleviating miseries of stranded Pakistanis in Bangladeshi camps. Nizami persistently highlighted the issue of stranded Pakistanis in his daily Nawa-e-Waqt.

Qari Abdul Majeed made special supplication for Allah’s mercy, blessing, forgiveness and place in Jannah to Aali.

Those present were Shamsuddin Altaf, Shahid Nayeem, Zamurrad Khan Saifi, Zubair Ahmed, Hamid Islam Khan, Mohammad Moizuddin, Azeez Ahmad, Syed Naseeruddin, Khaled Jawed, Syed Qamar Shah, Syed Mahmood Akhter, Qazi Pervez, Ghazanfar Hassan, Altafur Rahman, Mohammad Akram Agha and Qari Abdul Majeed.

With PRC General Secretary Abdul Qayyum Waseq ending his stay in the Kingdom and returning to Pakistan, the organization has a new team of office-bearers: Ehsanul Haque, convener; Hamid Islam Khan, deputy convener; Dr. Irfan Hashmi, senior vice president; Syed Mahmood Akhter, vice president; Syed Musarrat Khalil, general secretary; Syed Shahabuddin, deputy general secretary; Mohammad Amanatullah, press and publication secretary; Syed Gazanfar Hassan, joint secretary; and Naushad Usman, social secretary.

PRC’s advisory body is headed by Abdullah Omar Nasseef with Ali Al-Ghamdi, Aftab Hussain Altaf, Shamsuddin Altaf, Choudhry M. Riaz Grumman and M. Ashfaque Badayuni as members.