I don’t beleive that I have ever read a more discouraging article from Cowasjee than the one that appeared in dawn today. I hope some of the jihadis read it carefully, and decide if that is what we want for Pakistan the world over?
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/cowas.htm
‘At the bottom of the sea’
By Ardeshir Cowasjee
“I long for the day when I’ll be able to see Indian ships manned by Indians sailing in Indian waters and carrying all of India’s cargoes.” So said Walchand Hirachand, a merchant prince of Bombay, in the later 1920s. Thus, he, two other Bombay merchants, Narottam Morarji and M A Master, and F E Dinshaw, Maharaja Scindia of Gwalior’s financial adviser, got together, pooled their resources, fought the predominantly British interests, and formed the Scindia Steam Navigation Company. Their first ship was named Loyalty.
When the SS Loyalty arrived in Karachi, the new company was somewhat strapped for funds. Scindia’s stevedores and coal bunkerers were Cowasjee & Sons, headed then by two brothers, Fakirjee and Minocher Cowasjee. They serviced the vessel with no charge telling Scindia ‘pay when you can’.
Some twenty years later, in 1946, a man named Mohammad Ali Jinnah, then in Bombay, told his confidant, Yusuf Abdullah Haroon (still very much with us), that he wished to meet Rustom Fakirjee Cowasjee of Karachi and asked Yusuf to request Cowasjee to come to Bombay to talk to him as he was interested in buying and expanding his family shipping firm, East & West Steamship Company. Jinnah’s reasoning was that Pakistan, when it came into being, would need ships. He wished to establish a Pakistani public limited ship owning company with a fleet of a hundred ships.
So, Rustom Cowasjee went to Bombay and met Jinnah. Why buy my company, said Rustom to Jinnah. Pakistan will need many ships and many companies. I will start the ball rolling and form a large company for you. Fair enough, said Jinnah, and summoned Muhammad Ali Habib of Habib Bank of Bombay. Find the finances, he told him, and get going. They did and the result was the formation of the Muhammadi Steamship Company Limited. The day Pakistan was born, on August 14, 1947, Rustom Cowasjee and Muhamamd Ali Habib were in London arranging to acquire ships.
Many ship-owning companies came into being over the years and Pakistan by the late 1960s to early 1970s had its flag flying on just under a hundred vessels. Jinnah’s wish had been fulfilled. But what Mohammad Ali Jinnah had not foreseen was that in 1974, a prime minister of Pakistan would, on New Year’s Day, destroy the entire ship owning business of Pakistan by nationalizing all the ship-owning companies built up over a quarter of a century. Now, in 2002, Pakistan, a maritime nation with a coastline of almost a thousand miles, has not one single ship owned by the private sector. The governments which followed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s nationalizing government did their best to revive private ship- owning in Pakistan, but their half-baked policies never gelled.
The government-owned Pakistan National Shipping Corporation (PNSC) today owns eleven 22-year-old redundant dry cargo ships, three container vessels (which each lose some $6,000 a day) and one 27-year-old tanker. The residual life of this grand fleet is two to three years. The corporation has devoured billions of rupees belonging to the people of Pakistan and the shareholders’ equity has been wiped out by accumulated losses.
Pakistan imports some 19 million tons of oil and petroleum products. This government, in its finite wisdom, in the form of the ministers of petroleum and communications, have forced the three refineries of Pakistan to sign up with the PNSC a ten-year affreightment contract with the refineries (which means us, the people) which forces them into paying almost double the market freight rate of what the rate will be over the ten-year period. According to the national shipping policy, the first preference for all Pakistani cargoes is to be given to the PNSC. In any case, for all intents and purposes, private ship owning in Pakistan is sunk.
Having lost our ships, all we had left was seafarers - a well-trained bunch of officers who are well liked by foreign ship-owners and many seamen who are not so well liked because of their beliefs and tendencies. We Pakistanis are now an endangered species. Signals, such as the one reproduced hereunder, to vessels docking at foreign ports (in this case Singapore) carrying Pakistanis crews are common.
“To Master Sea Bright. F M Stadsons Shipping and Trading Pte Ltd - LEK. View Pakistani and Bangladeshi crew. Free pratique not granted. Please proceed to pilot eastern boarding ground Alpha for compulsory pilot shifting vessel to western immigration quarantine anchorage (WIQA) for immigration physical attendance. Tlx portmaster Rs 23,333 one day prior arrival. VHF port operation on Ch/10 five hours before arrival yr/ETA P/Stn requesting pilot attendance. Upon pilot boarding pls VHF Ch/14 for immigration officer attendance advising yr ETA (WIQA) and have ready 14 pcs of crew list for endorsement. After immigration physical attendance, pls VHF pilot again for shifting vessel to western working anchorage for repairs/etc. Keep us closely advised yr ETA. Please note: all crew members are not permitted to come ashore for shopping/etc during the entire stay of the vessel.”
Fairplay International Shipping Weekly which is read by every owner and agent all over the world on September 5 came out with a cover on which was the exclamation: ‘Keep out! Doors shut on Pakistanis.’ One story inside is headed “The criminalization of Pakistani seafarers - New rules at home and abroad damage reputations,” and the sub-heading reads: “It’s been the dark but open secret of shipping since the US declared its ‘war on terrorism’, but few dare mention it. Governments won’t admit it but there is no denying that even experienced Pakistani seafarers, by dint of being one of a handful of nationalities unofficially deemed ‘potentially terrorist’, are fast becoming the outcasts of the oceans.” Another story carries the heading: "Someone rigged the system! Heads will roll, promises Pakistan’s minister. ‘I am not going to spare these *****s’!"
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It is widely known abroad that most Pakistanis consider themselves to be soldiers of God on a divine mission and take it upon themselves to do unbidden whatever they deem necessary to protect His interest. The ministry of communications has awoken and are holding a seminar on the subject of Fairplay magazine. This government, placed as it is, will neither have the time nor the inclination to solve the problems of our seafarers. We can only hope that Musharraf will choose more competent ministers to head the communications and petroleum ministries in the new government to come. The general secretary of the Pakistan Merchant Navy Officers’ Association, writing to the petroleum minister on October 18, invoked a plea: “May Allah give you the vision, wisdom, courage and guidance to streamline the affairs in your ministry.”
By the grace of God, we rest in peace at the bottom of the sea.