UAE arm of International Red Cross launches Ramadan project in Pakistan
UAE arm of International Red Cross launches Ramadan project in Pakistan/node/2592234/pakistan
UAE arm of International Red Cross launches Ramadan project in Pakistan
The screengrab from a video shared by the UAE consulate in Karachi on March 2, 2025, shows people eating iftar boxes donated by Emirates Red Crescent in Pakistan. (UAE consulate in Karachi/Screengrab)
KARACHI: The Emirates Red Crescent is distributing thousands of iftar boxes in the rural areas of Pakistan’s Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan provinces, the UAE consulate said recently, reiterating its commitment to spreading joy among impoverished Pakistanis without discrimination.
Every year the Emirates Red Crescent distributes iftar boxes in Pakistan during the holy month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast from dawn to dusk and increasingly engage in the remembrance of the Almighty.
The Emirates Red Crescent distributed thousands of iftar boxes among poor Pakistanis in Ramadan last year as well.
“Thousands of people fasting are receiving the blessings of iftar every day through the iftar dastarkhwan [project] by the Red Crescent,” a statement by the UAE consulate in Karachi said on Sunday. “This is being carried out in the rural and backward areas of Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab.”
The consulate said that the Red Crescent’s first priority is distributing iftar boxes prepared in accordance with the highest standards of hygiene to people.
Emirates Red Crescent Director Hamad Bakheet Ateeq Al Remeithi said spreading happiness and smiles on the faces of one’s own brings heartfelt satisfaction.
“The series of love that begins with the month of Ramadan will double the joy of Eid Al-Fitr,” Remeithi said.
Ramadan is observed by Muslims worldwide through fasting from dawn to sunset, with most practicing Muslims considering it a time of spiritual reflection, self-discipline and devotion. Fasting serves as a means of strengthening faith and developing empathy for the less fortunate.
Pakistan welcomed the start of the holy month on Sunday, a day after the ninth month of the Islamic Hijri calendar began in Saudi Arabia.
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal (PBM) will launch one of its largest relief campaigns in Ramadan through which it would provide over five million iftar meals across the country to the underprivileged, state-run media reported recently.
The PBM is an autonomous body which undertakes charitable ventures aimed at alleviating poverty through various services and provides assistance to widows, orphans and other deserving individuals.
Senator Shaheen Khalid Butt, the PBM’s managing director, told state broadcaster Radio Pakistan that the campaign will target “the most deserving and underprivileged segments of society.”
A volunteer distributes iftar meals to Muslims waiting to break their fast on the first day of the Islamic holy fasting month of Ramadan, at Memon mosque in Karachi on March 2, 2025 (AFP)
“Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal is set to launch one of its largest relief campaigns during the holy month of Ramzan, aiming to distribute over five million iftar meal boxes across the country under the Prime Minister’s Special Initiative,” Radio Pakistan reported on Sunday.
Butt said the initiative would provide ready-to-eat meals through the PBM’s existing district-level infrastructure spread countrywide. He said mosques, orphan centers, women empowerment centers, schools and other designated locations will be targeted for distribution of meals.
“He said thirty-three mobile trucks will also operate on different routes to reach the most remote areas,” Radio Pakistan stated.
Muslim devotees break their fast with an iftar meal on the first day of Islamic holy fasting month of Ramadan in Karachi on March 2, 2025 (AFP)
On Saturday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif launched a Rs20 billion ($71.4 million) relief package a day before Ramadan 2025 began, saying it aimed to benefit four million families across the country.
As per the package, the Pakistani government will provide Rs5,000 ($17.87) each to around four million families across the country to support them during the month of Ramadan, officials said.
Sharif had said the amount would be distributed to people across all four Pakistani provinces, as well as Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir areas, through the digital wallet system.
While consumer inflation in Pakistan declined to 2.4 percent in January compared to 24 percent in the same period last year, many Pakistanis say they are still feeling the pinch as the country navigates a tricky path to economic recovery from a prolonged macroeconomic crisis.
ISLAMABAD: The Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) recently lifted the international suspension it had imposed on Pakistan after the country unanimously approved its proposed constitutional amendments, the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) said recently.
FIFA hit Pakistan on Feb. 6 with a third international suspension in less than eight years after the federation rejected its electoral reforms. Following the suspension, the PFF unanimously approved FIFA’s proposed constitutional amendments in an extraordinary meeting in Lahore last Thursday.
“The Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) welcomes FIFA’s decision to lift the suspension imposed on February 6, 2025,” the PFF said in a statement on Sunday. “The decision follows the unanimous approval of FIFA-proposed amendments by the newly elected PFF Congress in the PFF constitution during an Extraordinary Congress meeting held in Lahore on February 27, 2025.”
PFF Normalization Committee Chairman Saud Hashimi congratulated the nation on the development.
“This is a historic day for Pakistani football, and we are committed to fulfilling FIFA and AFC’s mandate to ensure a stable and progressive future for the sport in the country,” Hashimi said.
The move means Pakistan will now be able to play Syria on Mar. 25 in its first qualifier for the upcoming 2027 Asian Cup.
The PFF has been mired in crisis and controversy since 2015 and this was the third time since 2017 that Pakistan has been suspended.
In June 2022, FIFA lifted the PFF’s suspension, which had been imposed due to undue third-party interference a year earlier. A group of officials led by Ashfaq Hussain Shah, which was elected by the Supreme Court in 2018 to run the PFF but was not recognized by FIFA, took over the headquarters in March 20121.
They had seized control from FIFA’s normalization committee headed by Haroon Malik. The committee had not conducted elections for the body in the 18 months since it took charge.
FIFA suspended the PFF due to the “hostile takeover” but lifted the ban after confirmation the committee had regained full control of the PFF’s premises and was in a position to manage its finances.
Pakistan was also suspended by FIFA for third party interference in 2017.
Pakistan’s old English manners spell youth Scrabble success
Despite a musty reputation, the word-spelling game has a cult youth following in Pakistan
Karachi schools organize tutorials with Scrabble coaches, grant scholarships to top players
Updated 03 March 2025
AFP
KARACHI : “Dram,” meaning a measure of whisky. “Turm,” describing a cavalry unit. “Taupie,” a foolish youngster.
Not words in a typical teen’s vocabulary, but all come easily to Pakistani prodigy Bilal Asher, world under-14 Scrabble champion.
Despite a musty reputation, the word-spelling game has a cult youth following in Pakistan, a legacy of the English language imposed by Britain’s empire but which the country has adapted into its own dialect since independence.
In the eccentric field of competitive Scrabble, Pakistan’s youngsters reign supreme — the current youth world champions and past victors more times than any other nation since the tournament debuted in 2006.
“It requires a lot of hard work and determination,” said 13-year-old Asher after vanquishing a grey-bearded opponent.
“You have to trust the process for a very long time, and then gradually it will show the results.”
In this photograph taken on February 1, 2025, students compete in an inter-school Scrabble championship organised by the Pakistan Scrabble Association (PSA) at Bai Virbaiji Soparivala (BVS) Parsi school in Karachi. (AFP)
Karachi, a megacity shrugging off its old definition as a den of violent crime, is Pakistan’s incubator for talent in Scrabble — where players spell words linked like a crossword with random lettered tiles.
Schools in the southern port metropolis organize tutorials with professional Scrabble coaches and grant scholarships to top players, while parents push their kids to become virtuosos.
“They inculcate you in this game,” says Asher, one of around 100 players thronging a hotel function room for a Pakistan Scrabble Association (PSA) event as most of the city dozed through a Sunday morning.
In this photograph taken on February 16, 2025, Pakistani prodigy Bilal Asher, world under-14 Scrabble champion, competes against professional Scrabble coach Waseem Khatri during an event organised by the Pakistan Scrabble Association (PSA) at the Beach Luxury hotel in Karachi. (AFP)
Daunters (meaning intimidating people), imarets (inns for pilgrims) and trienes (chemical compounds containing three double bonds) are spelled out by ranks of seated opponents.
Some are so young their feet don’t touch the ground, as they use chess clocks to time their turns.
“They’re so interested because the parents are interested,” said 16-year-old Affan Salman, who became the world youth Scrabble champion in Sri Lanka last year.
“They want their children to do productive things — Scrabble is a productive game.”
English was foisted on the Indian subcontinent by Britain’s colonialism and an 1835 order from London started to systematize it as the main language of education.
The plan’s architect, Thomas Macaulay, said the aim was to produce “a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”
In this photograph taken on February 1, 2025, students compete in an inter-school Scrabble championship organised by the Pakistan Scrabble Association (PSA) at Bai Virbaiji Soparivala (BVS) Parsi school in Karachi. (AFP)
It was instrumental in creating a colonial civil service to rule for Britain according to Kaleem Raza Khan, who teaches English at Karachi’s Salim Habib University.
“They started teaching English because they wanted to create a class of people, Indian people, who would be in the middle of the people and the rulers,” said Khan, whose wife and daughter are Scrabble devotees.
British rule ended in the bloody partition of 1947 creating India and Pakistan.
Today there are upwards of 70 languages spoken in Pakistan, but English remains an official state language alongside the lingua franca Urdu, and they mingle in daily usage.
Schools often still teach English with verbose colonial-era textbooks.
“The adaptation of English as the main language is definitely a relation to the colonial era,” PSA youth program director Tariq Pervez. “That is our main link.”
In this photograph taken on February 16, 2025, Pakistan Scrabble Association (PSA) youth programme director Tariq Pervez (C) teaches children competing in a Scrabble championship organised by PSA at the Beach Luxury hotel in Karachi. (AFP)
The English of Pakistani officialdom remains steeped in anachronistic words.
The prime minister describes militant attacks as “dastardly,” state media dubs protesters “miscreants” and the military denounces its “nefarious” adversaries.
Becoming fluent in the loquacious lingo of Pakistani English remains aspirational because of its association to the upper echelons.
In Pakistan more than a third of children between the ages of five and 16 are out of school — a total of nearly 26 million, according to the 2023 census.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif declared an “education emergency” last year to address the stark figures.
“People are interested in Scrabble because they can get opportunities for scholarships in universities or for jobs because it provides the vocab,” said Asher’s sister Manaal.
In this photograph taken on February 1, 2025, students compete in an inter-school Scrabble championship organised by the Pakistan Scrabble Association (PSA) at Bai Virbaiji Soparivala (BVS) Parsi school in Karachi. (AFP)
But the 14-year-old reigning female number one in Pakistan warned: “You’ve got to be resilient otherwise Scrabble isn’t right for you.”
In the Karachi hotel, Scrabble — invented in the 1930s during America’s Great Depression by an unemployed architect — is an informal training program for success in later life.
“The main language of learning is English,” said Pervez.
“This game has a great pull,” he added. “The demand is so big. So many kids want to play, we don’t have enough resources to accommodate all of them.”
At the youngest level the vocabulary of the players is more rudimentary: toy, tiger, jar, oink.
But professional Scrabble coach Waseem Khatri earns 250,000 rupees ($880) a month — nearly seven times the minimum wage — coaching some 6,000 students across Karachi’s school system to up their game.
In Pakistani English parlance “they try to express things in a more beautiful way — in a long way to express their feelings,” said 36-year-old Khatri.
“We try to utilize those words also in Scrabble.”
But when Asher wins he is overwhelmed with joy, and those long words don’t come so easily.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Uzbekistan have set a bilateral trade target of $1 billion, Pakistani state media reported on Sunday, citing the Uzbek envoy to Islamabad.
The development came nearly a week after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s visit to Uzbekistan as part of Pakistan’s economic diplomacy push to enhance trade and investment with landlocked Central Asian states.
Pakistan is seeking to leverage its strategic position as a key trade and transit hub to connect Central Asia with global markets and since last year, there has been a flurry of high-level visits, investment discussions and other economic engagements between Islamabad and Central Asian republics.
Both countries have lately been working toward optimizing cargo flows, establishing green corridors at border customs points, and digitalization of customs clearance processes to facilitate smoother trade operations.
“Pakistan and Uzbekistan are committed to achieve the target of bilateral trade volume worth one billion dollar,” Uzbek Ambassador to Pakistan Alisher Tukhtaev was quoted as saying by the Radio Pakistan broadcaster.
“Specific measures were being taken to expand the export and import structure of food, textile, and electrical products.”
The development comes as Pakistan treads a long path to economic recovery under a $7 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) program Islamabad secured in Sept. last year.
Uzbekistan is the largest consumer market and the second-biggest economy in Central Asia. It is central to Pakistan’s regional connectivity plans and was the first Central Asian nation with which Pakistani officials signed a bilateral Transit Trade Agreement (UPTTA) and a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) covering 17 items.
Ambassador Tukhtaev said both countries were developing and diversifying cargo transportation routes for fast and convenient movement of goods, in cooperation with large transport and logistics companies, according to the report.
“Uzbekistan is interested in increasing the volume of agricultural exports to Pakistan, especially in the supply of fruits and vegetables, grain products, and textile products,” he said.
“At the same time, Pakistan’s potential in the pharmaceutical, textile, construction materials and information technology sectors is also of great importance for the Uzbek market.”
Pakistan and Uzbekistan have forged strong economic ties in recent years and a landmark moment in their relationship was the signing of the Joint Declaration on the Establishment of a Strategic Partnership during the visit of a high-level Pakistani delegation to Uzbekistan on July 15-16, 2021. This was followed by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s visit to Pakistan on March 3-4, 2022, which resulted in the signing of another Joint Declaration on Further Steps to Enhance the Strategic Partnership and multiple agreements covering trade, investment, and economic cooperation.
In February 2023, Pakistan and Uzbekistan signed a $1 billion trade deal to enhance bilateral commerce, facilitating the exchange of goods and services.
Last month, Ambassador Tukhtaev also announced plans to launch direct flights between Uzbekistan and Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi.
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has directed federal and provincial authorities to ensure provision of food items to people at affordable rates during the holy month of Ramadan, Pakistani state media reported on Sunday.
The prime minister gave the directives while presiding over a meeting in Lahore to review supply and prices of sugar in the South Asian country.
Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, wherein Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise till sunset for a month.
While the government tries to keep the prices in check, hoarders often create artificial shortage of essential items to make illegal profits during Ramadan.
“Shehbaz Sharif said provision of sugar and other food items at affordable rates to people is top priority of the government,” the Radio Pakistan broadcaster reported.
“He emphasized strict action against smuggling and hoarding.”
The prime minister said the government’s crackdown on sugar smuggling helped combat it successfully in the last few months, directing authorities devise a strategy for provision of food items at affordable rates, according to the report.
The provincial chief secretaries assured the meeting that stern action will be taken against hoarders and the district administrations will work vigilantly to this effect.
The month of Ramadan, the exact start date of which depends on the sighting of the new moon, began in Pakistan on Sunday, with many Pakistanis saying they were feeling the pinch despite a decline in consumer inflation to 2.4 percent in Jan. as compared to 24 percent in the same period last year.
On Saturday, Sharif launched a Rs20 billion ($71.4 million) Ramadan relief package to benefit 4 million families across the South Asian country. The Pakistani government is providing each family Rs5,000 ($17.87) to support them during the holy fasting month.
“This [package] would cover the whole of Pakistan, all provinces, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir,” Sharif said at the launching ceremony.
“This amount will be distributed among deserving people in all these areas through a digital [wallet] system.”
