Impatient in the ‘month of patience’

Islamabad

Come Ramazan and more and more people in the capital city hand out food to the poor people for ‘iftar’, the breaking of the daylong fast at sunset.

Some approach charity organisations for food distribution but mostly the people do the job by themselves. They either make food arrangements by the roads or turn up at major public places and slums in cars with meal packets.

However, unruly scenes are common at such places with the people desperately jostling and pushing each other to get or snatch meals from distributors. And some even wound themselves or others in the process.

The manhandling often leads to the waste of food to the dismay of distributors.

“Last week, I went to a slum near the Islamic University in the afternoon to distribute meal packets. Here I stepped out of my car and gave a girl a packet, there the people came running to me in large numbers.

“I asked them to line up but they were so desperate that they pounced on me and snatched away all packets leaving me utterly shaken,” Hamza, an I-10/4 trader, said.

He said the snatching ripped some packets open littering food on the ground, and even scuffles ensued.

Having learnt a bitter lesson from the incident, the trader said he would never try distributing food by himself and would rather approach credible charity organisations for it.

There are also complaints of free food reaching the undeserving people, who hoard them for future use to the disadvantage of many poor people.

Clerics favour organised food distribution among the poor for ‘iftar’.

Mufti Abdul Hafeez, of I-9/4 Jamia Masjid, said Islam didn’t allow waste of food and therefore, it should be handed out in such a way that the waste was the minimum.  At the same time, he urged food distributors to ensure that ‘iftar’ items reach the deserving poor only.