Pakistan remains in shock and grief after the death on Friday of the prominent charity worker, Abdul Sattar Edhi. All Pakistanis held Edhi in high esteem.
Thousands of people attended his funeral in Karachi on Saturday. Among those present were the president, army chief and a number of senior officials. Edhi, who was born in a poor family, started his charity work at an early age.
He led a simple life despite the Edhi Foundation having a budget of millions of dollars. Edhi served humanity without any discrimination, irrespective of religion, creed, ethnicity, caste and sect. His work in Pakistan and abroad had won wide acclaim. The Edhi Foundation was one of the first charity groups to provide aid to the people of New Orleans after the devastating hurricane there in 2005.
Together with his wife, Bilquis Edhi, he received the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service. He was also the recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize and the Balzan Prize. In 2006, the Institute of Business Administration Pakistan conferred an honorary doctorate on him. In 2010, Edhi was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bedfordshire. In 1989, he received the Nishan-e-Imtiaz honour from the Pakistan government. In 2014, he was voted the 2013 Person of the Year by the readers of The Express Tribune. He was recommended for a Nobel Peace prize by Pakistan’s former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Edhi started his charity work just with a few rupees, working from a small tent pitched in front of his house. The Edhi Foundation now has the largest network of ambulances and runs orphanages, child centres and old-age homes. Public donations are the main source of the foundation’s income.
The organisation has held the Guinness record for world’s “largest volunteer ambulance organisation” since 1997.
The foundation takes part in disaster relief activities in several Asian and European countries.
The Edhi foundation runs the Maatch Goth graveyard in Karachi. All burial services there are free. This graveyard has 65,000 unknown graves. Volunteers collect the bodies of people who die on footpaths to bury them there. The foundation has collected the fingerprints of every person buried there and through computer records, one can identify any buried person later.
The foundation has a wide network of free centres. Qualified doctors are available in these centres.
Khawaja Umer Farooq
[email protected]
Carry on Edhi’s legacy
Dear Sir,
With the death of Abdul Sattar Edhi, the world has lost a champion of humanity who re-defined services for the poor and helpless.
The Edhi Foundation provides exemplary humanitarian support and relief to thousands of poor and displaced people, looks after the elderly and mentally ill, feeds hungry, rehabilitates drug addicts and offers shelter homes for women and children who have no place to go to.
The most notable deed of the foundation was giving a dignified burial to the bodies retrieved from streets.
The best tribute to Edhi will be to carry on with his legacy of humanitarian service to the needy with greater zeal.
Ramesh G Jethwani
(e-mail address supplied)