A "study tour" without any study

     A parliamentary delegation from Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) is most likely to proceed to the United States of America (USA) at the weekend on a weeklong “study tour” that many believe is merely a junket at the cost of poor taxpayers.

    The AJK Legislative Assembly secretariat had been making arrangements for the tour for quite some time to expend around Rs 9.5 million earmarked in current fiscal for foreign tours of parliamentary delegations. However, the move was virtually shrouded in secrecy in the absence of any official word by the LA secretariat on the subject, despite repeated queries by media persons.

      At least three notifications were issued about the tour in the recent past either due to replacement of members or change of travel dates or some other technical hitches. However, a final notification was issued on Wednesday, which said that an 11-member delegation under the leadership of Speaker Sardar Ghulam Sadiq would leave on November 7 for the weeklong visit to the US.

     The other members of delegation, according to the notification, were minister for information Sardar Abid Hussain Abid, minister for forests Sardar Javaid Ayub, minister for tourism Abdul Salam Butt, minister for electricity Faisal Mumtaz Rathore, minister for food Javed Iqbal Budhanvi, opposition PML-N lawmakers Chaudhry Tariq Farooq, Dr Najeeb Naqi and Barrister Iftikhar Gillani and MQM lawmaker Muhammad Salim Butt. LA secretary Chaudhry Basharat Hussain would accompany as delegation secretary.

    Though the notification was not available, Mr Hussain however told a group of media persons that the purpose of the visit was to “create awareness among our (Kashmiri) community on Kashmir freedom struggle, apart from holding meetings with the American think tanks.”

     The delegation, he added, would also visit the UN headquarters to call on some official there.

   However, with only two days to go to their departure, the delegation members were not aware about their appointments/engagements in the US. According to sources, no meeting or appointment stood confirmed as of Wednesday.

     “… Things are under process and will be finalized in a day,” Mr Hussain said.

He told that his secretariat had emailed Dr Maliha Lodhi, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN, and she would arrange a meeting with UN Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights, Ivan Šimonović.

     “We are expecting her reply by tomorrow. But, more than her, I am making efforts myself,” he said.

    When asked if the Foreign Office had been taken on board with regard to this visit, he said: “We have just informed them.”

     He also admitted that the delegation did not have any plan to meet any Congressman in the US.

    When reached on phone in Hajira, his hometown in district Poonch, LA Speaker Sadiq maintained that though the delegation would speak about Kashmir issue, “but primarily it was a study tour” like what were being regularly undertaken by the members of national and provincial assemblies in Pakistan.

   “We will visit the UN headquarters and meet different delegates. We have tasked the US based Kashmiri community to arrange these meetings,” he said.

     Asked if they would share the details of their engagements before departure, the speaker retorted: “We are not obliged to inform the public about (our engagements during the) tour.”

     Interestingly, Faisal Rathore, one of the delegation members, candidly admitted on Wednesday that appropriate preparations for the tour were missing. “But we will try our best to meet important figures, including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,” a paper quoted him as saying.

     On October 23, PML-N president Raja Farooq Haider, who is also Leader of the Opposition in AJK Assembly, had declared that his party’s lawmakers would not be part of any delegation, leaving without already arranged meetings/engagements.

     However, as yet only one of the three PML-N legislators, included in delegation, had announced that he would not join the delegation.

   “I am not going… But I can’t say about others,” said Chaudhry Tariq Farooq, in an SMS to this scribe.

     It may be recalled that Mr Farooq had also declined to join a similar junket in 2012 on the grounds that “tours without proper preparations were simply waste of taxpayers’ money.”

   Civil society activists were also angry at the “wasteful use of public money on fruitless visits.”

   “Even if it’s a study tour they should have chalked out plan of their engagements, appointments and meetings well before their departure. To me it’s simply a junket,” said Ayesha Siddique, a rights activist.

    Sources disclosed that LA secretariat was also working on another parliamentary delegation to be dispatched to Europe in near future.

    Those who have been left out now will make it to the next delegation, they said.

........ Tariq Naqash