Rs15.3m pledged as donations to Pakistan Red Crescent

A total of Rs15.3 million was pledged by guests as donations to the Pakistan Red Crescent at a dinner held by the Sindh Red Crescent.

The dinner was held at the residence of the outgoing deputy-head of the UK diplomatic mission, Steve Crossman, on Saturday evening. Dr Junaid Ali Shah of the AO Clinic, who also compered the function, pledged Rs500,000 as did Dr Farhan Essa of the Essa Laboratories.

Mehtab Ali Chawla pledged Rs2.5 million. Sardar Yaseen Malik, pledged Rs10 million, while the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) pledged Rs100,000. All the donations were made at the spur of the moment.

Shahnaz Hamid, chairperson, Sindh Red Crescent, thanked Steve Crossman for his cooperation in the form of the venue for the fundraiser. She said that the 190 societies which were the affiliates of the International Red Cross had rendered yeoman’s service in improving the lives of the disadvantaged and mitigating abject poverty and spiralling inflation, made all the more accentuated by natural or man-made disasters.

She thanked the German, Canadian and Norwegian Red Cross as also the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) for having come to the aid of Pakistan in the course of natural disasters. She said that looking at the world as it was today, the twin menace of wars and terrorism need to be addressed right away.

Dr Saeed Elahi, who had come from the Red Crescent Office at Islamabad, said the Red Crescent was the largest humanitarian body in Pakistan. Right now, he said, the organisaton had 1.5 million volunteers. It had within its ambit, he said, 26,000 madrasas and 20,000 blood banks. Steve Crossman lauded the role of the Red Cross globally. “The Red Cross are very special people,” he said.