SAARC Chamber Welcomes India, Pakistan For Sending Donation To Afghanistan:- Iftikhar Ali Malik

SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Thursday welcomed the decisions of India and Pakistan for sending donations of food and medicines to Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 9th Dec, 2021 ) :SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Thursday welcomed the decisions of India and Pakistan for sending donations of food and medicines to Afghanistan.

Talking to a delegation of traders led by UBG President Zubair Tufail and General Secretary Zafar Bakhtawari, SAARC Chamber Chief Iftikhar Ali Malik said it's a good decision of Prime Minister Imran Khan to allow India despatch direly needed 50,000 metric tons of food to Afghanistan through Pakistan land routes with full security cover, said a press release issued here.

He also lauded Pakistan for supplying free medicines to Afghanistan and its first consignment worth rupee 25 million has been despatched from Karachi.

He called for urgent action to protect millions of Afghans from starvation and warned that over 22.8 million Afghans, who constitute nearly half of the total population, are facing food insecurity while 3.2 million children under the age of five years can suffer from acute malnutrition.

He said the international community especially the West and US must realize that this indifference may result in chaos, leading to internal strikes and civil war, the consequences of which would be disastrous for the whole world beyond Afghanistan.

He said it's a race against time and countries must step in to shoulder their responsibility and to address Afghanistan's latest disaster. He said this is a country where only 5 percent of the people have access to enough food to survive and Afghanistan is now among the world's worst humanitarian crises as this country is on a countdown to catastrophe.

Iftikhar Ali Malik who is also founder chairman Pak-US business Council and Chairman United Business Council said most disconcerting are reports that impoverished parents are selling off their babies to buy food and such is the level of desperation in the impoverished country.

He lamented hunger forcing Afghans to sell young daughters into marriage.

Zubair Tufail said at a donors conference in September last, the world community pledged $1 billion in humanitarian assistance, a third of which was to go to the WFP but the sum of money pledged to provide food to the hungry, amounted to " a drop in the ocean".

He said WFP needed as much as $22 million per month to help stave off death due to hunger.

He said tragically however, the world seems largely indifferent and aid is too little and too slow as the world powers continue to debate whether or not to recognize the Afghan Taliban.

He observed the response from the international community had thus been lukewarm, even downright cold, despite the unfolding human tragedy in a country that has known nothing but wars for the last four decades.

Zafar Bakhtawari called for devising a long-term road map for Afghanistan in order to advance the agenda of political engagement, economic integration, and regional connectivity.

He said " our collective efforts can halt economic meltdown. An economic collapse will yield instability, conflict, and a refugee influx into neighboring countries and onward to other regions, he concluded.