I try, in my humble capacity, to help people. I also have this habit of being a little suspicious of people around me. Therefore, when my maid comes to me to ask me for money, because her daughter is sick, I’m always willing to help if I can afford it. However, at the same time, I’m also a little skeptical because I might be getting duped into paying more money than I’m supposed to for my maid’s services.
Therefore I like to offer practical help as opposed to financial. For instance, if a maid tells me her daughter’s unwell and she needs money for some tests, I offer to take the daughter to the doctor myself and pay for whatever tests she needs, instead of just handing money over.
Anyway, this is all irrelevant to the point of my story. I’m just getting to the point. Because of my need to offer practical help, this time my maid came around to ask me for some extra cash to help out with a loan my maid’s husband is about to take from the bank. Why did she need cash to get her loan approved? Well I’ll tell you why.
Basically my maid’s husband has a government job and is looking to get a loan from the bank that pays him his salary (which is the National Bank of Pakistan, NBP.) The loan process is usually not complicated: the bank just deducts a small amount from his salary every month after the loan has been taken. This time round, her husband was told that he needs a signature from a 17 grade officer who will approve the loan. This 17 grade officer told the husband at first that he should pay him a bribe of Rs.1000 and then he will sign the paper. The husband said okay, and gave him a 1000 bucks.
The husband didn’t receive a response for another week so he again went to the officer. This time the officer asked for Rs.2000 more to sign the papers, otherwise the loan papers will keep sitting on his desk.
Just hearing this story irked me so much, that I wanted to go smack this guy in the face. But then I thought of another alternative. I offered to write a story on this man’s corruption and send it to some newspaper. I told my maid that this guy should not be receiving this money and who knows, he’ll probably ask for more the next time your husband goes to him. But my maid seemed skeptical- she said she doesn’t want to get her husband into trouble. I told her I won’t take your husband’s name, but she told me to let it be. I then urged her to discuss this with her husband, as I was sure that he would want to see justice.
But unfortunately, he didn’t want justice. He said the same thing as his wife, that he’d rather just give him the money. What if he somehow got involved in this? What if his job got taken away because of this?
And here lies my point of the story, that Karachiites have gotten trapped into this habit of not doing things differently. We only do what we’re comfortable with, and unfortunately we’re comfortable with some very useless things. Like corruption. Dishonesty. Sometimes we’re just lazy. I mean, why go through all the trouble?
Time to start speaking up people. Even for the little things.
PakolaShots 